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A Calabaricus
Erhard Roloff always considered calabarica as separate from liberiensis.
He felt the females showed this difference the most. He presented an article
on this matter in THE AQURIUM MAGAZINE in the early 1970's. In the 1970's, I
kept calabarica, liberiensis and liberiensis Firestone population. All three
were very different fish in appearance and behavior. Calabarica was very shy
and a true switch breeder -- laying eggs in peat and on mops. It was a lovely
dark dark greenish blue with lots of red markings in the body. The female had
a wonderful dark brown patterning on her sides. I raised quite a few at the
time. It is ashame that the population was lost. I doubt it will ever be
found again. Imagine, it survived WW II in Germany, came to this country by
way of E. Roloff to Franz Werner of Detroit after the war and was available
into the 1980's. It was an aquarium bred strain for nearly 50 years and
retained its vitality -- so much for inbreeding -- only to be lost by
neglect. That is sad. Luckily, we have several wonderful pictures of it --
Walter Foersch's in Gunther Sterba's monumental FRESHWATER FISHES OF THE
WORLD being the best! Franz Werner did a great article on calabarica in THE
AQURIUM JOURNAL in the late 50's or early 60's -- it is a good article to
read for breeding any of the plant/switch spawning killies -- infinitely
detailed. The english translation of the german book BREEDING AQUARIUM FISHES
by Nachstedt and Tusche (1950's) has a good chapter on breeding calabarica --
not to mention other killies. Sometimes I fear that calabarica was lost
because it was thrown in with liberiensis and people forgot that it was
different and rather special. I miss the fish.
Robert Ellermann
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