Tetra amanda: maintenance, care and breeding

The red nano-tetra is a freshwater fish, distinguished by its bright color and small size. It became widespread due to its simple care and spectacular appearance, in addition, this underwater inhabitant can be kept in small aquariums.

The tiny fish has a body flattened from the sides, painted in a deep yellow, bright red or orange color, and is no more than 2 cm long. Its tail and fins are almost transparent, but one can distinguish light blotches on them, folding into a kind of ornament.

The animal has large eyes with a black amber or orange pupil. Due to their size, the vision of the fish is particularly sharp. This advantage and the raised stigma allow the tetra to seek out prey in thickets of underwater plants. Females have a rounded abdomen, unlike males, which are also slightly smaller.

Dwarf amanda lives in flocks, and in its natural range - in whole colonies. It is mobile and can move throughout the entire water column of the aquarium in small jerks, sometimes making absolutely synchronous movements with its congeners. The graceful and fragile nano-tetra is distinguished by its high adaptability, allowing it to quickly adapt to a wide variety of conditions.

This inhabitant of tropical lakes and swamps is considered ideal for beginner aquarists; in good conditions, tetra can live for 2-3 years. The sociality of Amanda is also of interest - she can unite in schools with other small fish, in particular, with neons, the main thing is that their sizes do not exceed her own.

The red tetra cannot stand loneliness, therefore 10-15 fish should be purchased at once. The approximate volume of water for two animals is 10 liters, so a container with a volume of only 50 liters with a tank wall height of at least 30 cm is quite suitable for ten fish.

Such a southerner as a dwarf tetra prefers warm water with a temperature regime of 21-28 degrees. Other water parameters:

• hardness - 1-12 units;
• acidity - from 5 to 7 units.

Additional guidelines for creating the right conditions in your aquarium are presented below.

• Despite the fact that fish are very active, and this requires a lot of free space, they need a lot of underwater vegetation. In natural conditions, they live in dim lighting and cannot stand bright light, so it is so important to create shaded locations for them by placing different types of grasses, driftwood and rounded stones in the aquarium. Artificial decorations will be a great addition. The soil and artificial structures must be cleaned every month.
• To recreate the natural landscape familiar to the tetra, sandy, soft soil is used, preferably dark. It is also advisable to place dry foliage of oak, alder, almond or birch on the bottom. This will not only decorate an artificial reservoir, but also allow saturating the microenvironment with a water-soluble polyphenol - tannin, which has a beneficial effect on the immune system of fish. This substrate needs to be changed periodically.
• To keep the water soft, you can apply filtration using peat, which reduces its carbonate hardness. With small sizes of the tank, the aeration system can be neglected, but filtration is mandatory in any case.

In the wild, amanda feeds on small invertebrates and crustaceans, as well as other microorganisms, unicellular and colonial, which are zooplankton, unable to resist water currents.

In a home aquarium, tetras willingly eat different types of food:

• ready-made feed in the form of flakes and granules;
• frozen food - red larvae of mosquito, benthic crustaceans (brine shrimp), daphnia, copepods, moin, which are preferable due to their scanty size (1 mm).

The tetras are fed twice or three times during the day in very small portions. It is good if the fish immediately eat the food, and it does not sink to the bottom.

The dwarf tetra has a small mouth, therefore any food must be thoroughly chopped. In the diet of fish, diversity is important, on which both the activity of the underwater inhabitant and the presence of a spectacular color depend.

Amanda eats any food only afloat, that is, in the water column - this is due to the structure of her jaws, therefore the remaining food will fall to the bottom, from where the fish will no longer collect it.

Reproduction of amanda tetra can begin when the fish reach sexual maturity - 4 months. In fact, tetras living separately from other species will take excellent care of the reproduction of their offspring themselves. As a rule, females leave eggs on plants with small tender leaves.The fry that appear later can feed on unicellular and other microorganisms that have entered the aquarium with dried tree leaves.

But breeding is often endangered due to the fact that adult fish can eat their tiny children. In this case, breeding fry in a separate container will help. You can do it competently as follows:

• having selected the most beautiful and mobile fish, they need to be seated in different tanks;
• then start feeding them varied, giving larger portions;
• then prepare a separate container, creating ideal conditions for a couple - a temperature of 25-27 degrees, neutral acidity, diffused lighting, such an unpretentious aquatic aquatic organism as Javanese moss can be placed on the bottom, and a fine-mesh separator mesh on top;
• in the evening during spawning, a couple of tetras are placed in this aquarium, and after the eggs appear, most often the next day, they are returned to the tank for permanent residence.

Babies emerge from the eggs after two days and for the first 2 days they feed on their own reserves (yolk sac). After that, they can be fed with live dust, ciliates, washed with boiled yolk. As they grow, small crustaceans (cyclops) will become food for the fry, nauplii - brine shrimp larvae, small primary cavity worms - rotifers.

Being predators in relation to small organisms, amandas are quite friendly in relation to other, equally medium-sized, peace-loving species.

Tetra can get along with such inhabitants of the underwater world as:

• melanothenia precox - neon iris;
• rassbora from the carp family;
• schooling ornamental zebrafish;
• ordinary neon (blue);
• aquarium viviparous guppy fish;
• the representative of ray-finned pecilia fish is the sword-bearer;
• small armored catfish corridor, also living in flocks.

Those who breed amanda tetra for the first time should know that a fish that is naturally healthy can get sick and die due to improper feeding, sudden temperature changes and changes in water composition, and a settlement with large fish leads to stress, which reduces its immunity. In this case, there is a possibility of an infectious disease.

Experienced aquarists do not recommend keeping these fish in too warm water, although they feel comfortable in it. Better to maintain temperature 20-23 degrees, since a cool environment extends the life of a tetra up to 3-4 years, due to a slowdown in metabolic processes.

For the features of caring for tetra amanda fish, see the video below.