Care
Wild populations of this fish are found in habitats which include seasonal floodplains, where they take advantage of the complex environment to avoid predators and forage for invertebrates.
Their aquarium should be spacious, with areas of cover to provide them with hiding places which will be used less frequently the more they settle in. As with most tetras, these are shoaling fish that are most comfortable and look their best when kept in large numbers. Rather than shoaling aimlessly, males will defend their personal space and display to rivals and females, showing their best colours when they have plenty of both to impress. As a larger tetra, these fish make excellent tankmates for a range of species including Eartheaters, Discus and Angels which would snack on smaller tetras. Their peaceful nature also makes them compatible with smaller, peaceful fishes.
With such a large distribution, populations vary in the intensity of their colouration with some showing more orange than red tails. May be seen as Red-tailed tetra, or misidentified as the very similar H. colleti.
Recent taxonomic work has put this species in the genus Hemigrammus.
Feeding
Offer a good quality flake food and micropellets, supplemented with small frozen foods such as daphnia and mosquito larvae.
Breeding
Spawning is yet to be reported but probably takes place in typical tetra fashion. Given the presence of the species in seasonally flooded areas, it’s likely that conditioning mature fish with a quality diet of livefoods and dropping the hardness through substantial water changes, whilst increasing temperature would be good ways to trigger spawning.
