Delicate Blue-eye

About

The delicate blue-eye (Pseudomugil tenellus) is a small rainbowfish relative from northern Australia and southern Papua New Guinea, where it inhabits sun-drenched swamps, billabongs, and the still backwaters of streams. Places thick with water lilies and aquatic vegetation over muddy or gravelly bottoms. It is sometimes called the Arnhem Land blue-eye, and one of its more reliable identification features is a midlateral scale row that forms a row of pale spots with darker gaps between them, a pattern that becomes more obvious as individuals mature. At under two and a half inches fully grown, these are genuinely small fish, and researchers suspect their range may be broader than currently mapped simply because they are so easy to overlook in the field. In the aquarium they are peaceful and work well in communities with similarly sized, mild-mannered species. Like most pseudomugils, they are strongly shoaling fish and really should be kept in groups of eight or more. Kept that way, the males put on a lively, color-saturated display as they compete for female attention, and the whole group settles into noticeably more relaxed, natural behavior. This is a short-lived genus overall, and fertility tends to drop off after about a year, so hobbyists keen on breeding them will want to plan accordingly. A forgiving choice for newer keepers with a suitable community setup.