Jordanella floridae
JORDANELLA FLORIDAE (Goode and Bean 1879)
Originally published as: B.K.A. Information pamphlet No.34 April 1968
Habitat: The fish are found, as one would expect, in the Florida region of the United States, but they are also found across the Gulf of Mexico and Yucatan.
Size: A good-sized male will grow to be 2″ long and larger. The female only a little smaller.
Colour: The Jordanella is an attractive little fish with a rather deep body, unlike many killifish which are, in general, a torpedo shape. The male is as deep in body as the female but the colours are much richer, green shading to gold overlaid with a fine red in chequered pattern. There is a dark lateral spot. In good breeding colour the male has light blue highlights in the dorsal and anal fins. The female is a dull green by comparison with faint lateral spot but with a distant dorsal spot.
Care: This fish must be fed a mixture of live food and green food, plenty of algae, Dry food will be taken from time to time. The algae is of the utmost importance to the well-being of the fish, and must be available from the fry stage onwards. If the fish is overindulged in meaty and dried foods the body becomes distended, and dropsy and death will soon follow. Green algae or blue – green algae will be cleared from a tank by these fish, using their specially adapted mouths to scrape it away in strips.
Breeding: The breeding set-up can be an 18″ x 10″ x 10″ tank filled to a depth of six or seven inches with ordinary tap water, this fish is not too fussy as to water conditions. Use a layer of soft material on the bottom such as plant debris. A clump of feathery plants can be used and top cover such as Riccia. The pair may elect to spawn at the top or at the bottom. The eggs can be gathered or left in the tank and the parents removed. Use an airstone to cradle the water over the eggs. The fry emerge on about the eighth day, but do not swim free until the ninth or tenth day. The first foods can be newly hatched brine shrimp and micro worm with some soft algae, during the second week Cyclops and sifted daphnia will be taken.
You can raise the fry by leaving the male in with the eggs, if the spawning is on the bottom he will fan the eggs and the fry during the wriggling stage and tend them like a dwarf cichlid might. If the spawning is at the surface, he will move the fry to the bottom at the wriggling stage. It is important that sharp gravel is avoided as the fry may lacerate themselves during the wriggling stage. The parents line the depression with debris, and this protects the fry.
The young fish grow very rapidly and are sexable in about six weeks. A good clue being the disappearance of the dorsal spot from the male fish.
Any community tank that has been the home of a pair of Jordanella with top cover plants if left unoccupied for a few days will often produce a family of fry from eggs that have been deposited during the time the tank was in use.
Conclusion: This is a very beautiful fish and is perhaps one of the few killies that can be classed as a community fish, by this it is meant that the Jordanella can survive the hurly-burly of this type of tank. It is, according to some books a quarrelsome fish and there are some reports of males fighting, this may be so with wild fish but most of the stock in this country has been tank – bred for several generations and this troublesome habit has been lost. Males can be boisterous, but the spawning drive is never so great as to cause serious damage and death to the females as is the case with some species of killies.
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