halfbeak identification, please!

[nmonks]

Hello,

Can anyone help me ID these halfbeaks. I bought them as Celebes halfbeaks, but the odd thing is that the males don't seem to have any sign of developing a "curly" beak. In fact the beaks are quite long and completely straight. Photo 1 shows this quite nicely. Only one of the male has red fins, the others are either vaguely reddish or not coloured at all.

Is this just variation within Nomorhamphus liemi liemi or a different species of halfbeak? Any ideas would be appreciated.

They fight a lot, incidentally. Much more than I'd anticipated. The smallest male is also the most colourful, and the only one with really red fins. So I'm surprised that he's also the one that is the most "damaged" with most of his beak broken off. I'm treating with finrot/mouthrot/fungus potion just in case but otherwise he seems fine and eats plenty. There are lots of floating plants as well, so mostly he hides away from the rest of the school (2 males, 3 females).

Thanks,

Neale

Halfbeak photo 1:

Halfbeak photo 2:

 

[paulthegreat]

Sorry, not aware of this being a livebearer. You may be asking on the wrong forum.

 

[nmonks]

Hi Paul,

It's definitely a livebearer. To the best of my knowledge, all the freshwater (and some of the marine) Hemirhamphidae are livebearers. I've only had one baby in my tank, and a still-born one at that. Though not full formed, it was amazingly big. Easily 10 mm long.

But you're right if you mean they're not Poecilidae. Is this livebearer section Cyprinodonts only? Surely that's xenophobia...!

Cheers,

Neale

Sorry, not aware of this being a livebearer. You may be asking on the wrong forum.

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[paulthegreat]

Well, this forum has mostly delt with Swordtails, Mollies, Platies and Guppies (Endlers) and Halfbeaks are news to me. To be sure Bull sharks are also live bearers. I do not know anything about Halfbeaks and I hope that you can find the help you need on them

How big are these fish?

PTG

 

[MAM]

I know nothing of halfbeaks, but I was curious so I did a little poking around. I see what you mean about them not quite looking like a celebes (though in that second shot, the one in front sort of looks like the lower lip has the curl).

Even though they ARE livebearers, they're really an oddball livebearer, not kept by many who frequent the livebearer section. However, someone lurking over in the Oddballs section might know more about them or actually keep them. You could try posting in that section as well.

 

[paulthegreat]

Thanx MAM,

nmonks,

I am interested on learning more about these Halfbeaks since I love my Swords and would like to try my hand at other livebearers. I am not very interested in the smaller livebearers(Swordies are the smallest I am interested in keeping) so if these Halfbeaks have 10mm live young they sound very interesting!!

 

[xander_chookeypud]

Wow- its the first i have seen or heard of halfbeaks! thought you were talking about birds at first! Hope to see them in my lfs soon cos they look pretty cool although i dont think i wil see any Never mind ay?! Ive always got pics on the net!

 

[rarefish]

Some info on halfbeaks:

Keeping 2 males together is not a good idea! They can and will shred each other to pieces! Also keeping 1 male to 1 female is not good! The male will torment her. On their difficulty of care, they are listed difficult, meaning that they will need a lot of attention and upkeep. They should be kept in at least a 30 gallon tank, and with a neutral pH. They are picky on the temperature, and are best kept at 75-79F. They are strict carnivores, and should be fed mainly live, frozen, and freeze-dried foods. Halfbeaks love to jump out of tanks, so be prepared with a well-fitted hood!
Here is a list of ideal tankmates that should be around the same size of the halfbeaks: Livebearers, Tetras, Rasboras, Danios, Rainbowfish, Plecos, and peaceful scavenger Catfish. Here is part of an article on them:

A community aquarium with plants, rocks, caves, and driftwood is well-suited for this fish. A small school should be kept with other peaceful fish of similar size. The tank should be covered since this fish tends to jump.

Nomorhamphus liemi breeds in shallow, soft, slightly acidic water. After a gestation period of about six to eight weeks, roughly ten, 3/4-inch fry are born. Small pieces of live food or infusoria should be fed to the fry.

Hope this helps! Celebes Halfbeaks are one of my favorites!

rarefish

 

[Elisabeth83]

I keep celebes halfbeaks and am so surprised and happy to see someone else on the forum does too. I posted a question awhile back regarding them and got no replies

They are a livebearer but in this section of the forum like paulthegreat said really only swordtails and guppies and all the other typical livebearers are talked about.

Anyways from what I can tell it looks like maybe in pic number 2 that the front one is a celebes halfbeak but to me the other 2 look like a different species. The reason why I say it looks like a celebes is because of it's much shorter beak and the curl under it's lip. Since I can't see any red/black coloring on it's fins though it looks to be female.

I've got no idea what species the other 2 could be. At the moment I've got just a male and female..I'm looking to add a couple more females..I've just been trying to ask around on the forum if I can keep a couple more in my 30 gallon. Some sites I've read that they should be kept a 35-40 gallon minimum but then other say 20-30 gallon is fine so I don't know

Like rarefish said 2 males together is usually a no no with this type of fish. The best ratio is 1 male to 2-3 females. From what I've read they said they mostly stay on the surface but mine especially the male swims at all levels and I see him scavenge for food on the bottom of the tank.

 

[nmonks]

(hmm... trying again, my post just vanished!)

Elizabeth,

Thanks for your comments, and I agree, there seem to be some N. liemi liemi and some of another species. The females all look pretty similar, but there are definitely two kinds of male: one smallish, with bright red fins and a stubby beak, and then two males that lack the coloured fins and have really long, straight beaks. Their heads look a lot like Dermogenys spp., frankly. The rest of them doesn't though.

Anyway, I can probably answer your question about the halfbeaks. Mine get along fine with a whole bunch of other fish. The main precaution I took was to make sure they were the only surface fish but they are such fast feeders that this probably doesn't matter. The only fish that are more greedy that they are are the black mollies. You can see some pictures and movies of what I keep with these fish here:

http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/aquaria/livestock.html

Back to my fighting halfbeaks. I uploaded a couple of short QuickTime movies to my web space. The first is mostly harmless, and you may be able to see that it isn't just the males that fight. The females are almost as aggressive and certainly threaten other halfbeaks (male or female). In fact one of the pushiest fish in the tank is a female.

Movie 1
Movie 2

The second movie is a little more scary. You can see the red male and a plain male fighting quite fiercely. Luckily the tank is fairly large (180 litres) and thickly planted and has lots of hiding places. So what mostly happens is five halfbeaks school more or less happily while the one red male hides among the Ceratophyllum demersum at the top. And yes, I have just dosed for finrot just to be on the safe side.

My fish are in hard, alkaline water. They seem to be doing fine, and the females are really growing quickly. One of them is huge, easily 9 cm long. She looks like a little barracuda!

I did actually plan on getting 2 males and 4 females, but a mistake was made in the fish shop, and one of the fish we thought was a girl turned out to be a boy.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[Elisabeth83]

nmonks - Was fun watching the videos of your healfbeaks and yes video 2 was kind of scary. Those males were really fighting. Do they ever cause any damage or is it mostly show?

I was trying to look up Dermogenys spp. but I couldn't find any pictures really? Any good halfbeak sites you know of with pictures?

I'm not afraid of the halfbeaks not getting any food I'm actually afraid of the other fish not getting any food They are fierce eaters arn't they? My male has no problems following the flake, bloodworm etc down to the bottom of the tank and eating with the other fish. It's funny to watch them..they remind me of pelicans

You keep yours in a tank nearly twice the size of mine..do you think I'll run into any problems? Do you think I can keep just the male and female or should I add 1-2 more females? At 9 cm they arn't tiny things so I'm not sure if I can fit more into the tank. Mind you the top of the tank is free so it would be all theirs.

My halfbeaks are in soft water and they seem fine with that so it seems as though they can adapt quite well to any type of waters. Do you keep salt in with yours? If so how much do you use?

edit: is this the halfbeak you were thinking the other lonnger beaked one was?

http/www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=11298

edit again: Taking a double look at the top of this page I'm assuming your the writer? "The Brackish Water Aquarium FAQ -- Compiled by Neale Monks -- Version 2.0" )

http/users.macunlimited.net/n.monks/brackfaq.html#BM6f

 

[Guitar17]

nmonks - Was fun watching the videos of your healfbeaks and yes video 2 was kind of scary. Those males were really fighting. Do they ever cause any damage or is it mostly show?

I was trying to look up Dermogenys spp. but I couldn't find any pictures really? Any good halfbeak sites you know of with pictures?

I'm not afraid of the halfbeaks not getting any food I'm actually afraid of the other fish not getting any food They are fierce eaters arn't they? My male has no problems following the flake, bloodworm etc down to the bottom of the tank and eating with the other fish. It's funny to watch them..they remind me of pelicans

You keep yours in a tank nearly twice the size of mine..do you think I'll run into any problems? Do you think I can keep just the male and female or should I add 1-2 more females? At 9 cm they arn't tiny things so I'm not sure if I can fit more into the tank. Mind you the top of the tank is free so it would be all theirs.

My halfbeaks are in soft water and they seem fine with that so it seems as though they can adapt quite well to any type of waters. Do you keep salt in with yours? If so how much do you use?

edit: is this the halfbeak you were thinking the other lonnger beaked one was?

http/www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=11298

edit again: Taking a double look at the top of this page I'm assuming your the writer? "The Brackish Water Aquarium FAQ -- Compiled by Neale Monks -- Version 2.0" )

http/users.macunlimited.net/n.monks/brackfaq.html#BM6f

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upside down catfish.i had one it played alot and then it just died for no reason but it awesome really supper cool awesome i think i might get another KO KO KA Kaboo

 

[nmonks]

Hej,

That second video shows the fighting at its worst. today, strangely enough, peace has been restored and they all seem fine. Schooling at the back happily. It might be because I was doing some planting and using the net to transfer some platies back to the tank... they're quite nervous fish. But whatever the reason, for now, things are fine.

1.

Do they cause any damage? Short term, yes, you can tell they lose scales and sometimes the beak gets damaged. Long term, no, the scratches on the body almost heal over night, and the beak gets back to normal within a month. So I guess provided they are otherwise healthy, they are able to put right superficial damage. I do add some finrot/mouth fungus potion if things look very bad. But otherwise small damages heal fine by themselves.

2.

There aren't that many good web pages on halfbeaks, but here are a couple I like:

http/www.mn-aquarium.org/masart23.htm

http/home.clara.net/xenotoca/hafbeak.htm

Some others with useful pictures are:

http/www.blackwaterfish.com/towoetii.htm

http/www.afae.it/pages/tematica/altrefam...iranfidi(1).htm

3.

I don't think these fish are very demanding about space. They mostly stay in one place, swimming into the current. As long as they aren't bumping into the glass, I think they will be fine in any size tank. But in a small tank, I think one male two 2-4 females would be sensible.

4.

Mine are in fresh (no salt) water, but it is hard and alkaline. If these are Celebes halfbeaks, your soft/acid water is better. But a local aquarium store has them at about SG 1.003 brackish, and they seem fine. So I think they are very adaptable. I do think they are sensitive to low oxygen, and if my tank gets too warm they stay close to surface and don't seem interested in food.

5.

Yes, that Dermogenys fish at Fishbase was exactly what I had in mind. At least one of my males has a long beak like that. But the body is quite chunky, like Celebes halfbeaks.

6.

Yes, that Brackish FAQ is me. The version you cite is an old one, but for the life of me I can't get that ISP to delete my files despite be not having paid them anything in 6 years! Madness!

The current version is here, along with some more pictures of my fish and some other aquarium stuff, like some free computer programs I wrote:

http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/aquaria/aqua.html

By the way, that halfbeak section in the FAQ has been substantially improved and expanded!

Skoal,

Neale

 

[nmonks]

Paul,

The biggest female is about 9 or 10 cm long, certainly bigger than a swordtail and more a sailfin molly sort of size. The males are quite a bit smaller.

They don't seem particularly difficult to keep but I did make one mistake early on, and that was getting them from a store a long way from home and transporting them back on a very hot day. Several of the fish died within a week. I'm pretty sure that was heat stress / lack of oxygen. On another occasion I carried a new batch back on a mild day and a shorter trip, and didn't (haven't) lost any (touch wood!).

Reading around, it seems halfbeaks are delicate for the first few days and if you do a big water change, but they're otherwise very hardy indeed.

I actually think they're fantastic fish and totally underrated. They're difficult to breed, sure, but they are very cool to watch.

Cheers,

Neale

Thanx MAM,

nmonks,

I am interested on learning more about these Halfbeaks since I love my Swords and would like to try my hand at other livebearers. I am not very interested in the smaller livebearers(Swordies are the smallest I am interested in keeping) so if these Halfbeaks have 10mm live young they sound very interesting!!

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