''Aphyosemion australe'', the lyretail panchax, golden panchax or Cape Lopez lyretail, is a species of freshwater fish belonging to the family

Aplocheilidae Aplocheilidae, the Asian killifishes or Asian rivulines, is a family of fish in the order Cyprinodontiformes found in Asia. Some authorities use this family-group name, which is well-established, for a single lumped aplocheiloid family as it give ...

. It is found around

Cape Lopez Cape Lopez () is a headland on the coast of Gabon, west central Africa. The westernmost point of Gabon, it separates the Gulf of Guinea from the South Atlantic Ocean. Cape Lopez is the northernmost point of a low, wooded island between two mouths ...

and in surrounding areas in

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

Appearance

''A. australe'' comes in a two colours. The wild type are brown and called 'chocolate' in the aquarium hobby and a man made 'gold' form exists which is orange; this form was spontaneous mutation bred by a Finnish aquarist name Hjerssen in 1952. JJ Scheel in "Rivulins of the World World (TFH PRess, 1970) pointed out these were not a separate species and deprecated the name ''Aphyosemion australe hjersseni''. An Albino strain appeared from the "hjersseni" strain around early 2022 and there are also darker "chocolate" and "spotless" varieties in the aquarium hobby. Males can reach a length of around 6 cm, with females being slightly smaller. The caudal fin is lyre-shaped, which is characteristic of the genus. The females also are less colourful; their body colouration is brownish tan for the wild form and a light tan for the gold/orange form, and they have rounder fins.

In the aquarium

The Cape Lopez lyretail is one of the most popular and commonly available species of

killifish A killifish is any of various oviparous (egg-laying) cyprinodontiform fish, including families Aplocheilidae, Pantanodontidae, Cyprinodontidae, Fundulidae, Nothobranchiidae, Profundulidae, Aphaniidae and Valenciidae. All together, there ar ...

. Spawns readily in the aquarium in nearly any water, spawning in fine-leafed water plants, such as aquatic moss. The fry emerge after 14 days at a preferred temperature of . They adapt well to any variety of commercially prepared foods, flake or frozen livefoods but like all killifish do better with living foods cultured or caught from clean sources.

References

External links

Fishbase
{{Taxonbar, from=Q384439 australe Fish described in 1921 Fish of Gabon