After Christian Cauvet, French aquarist & collector.

Romand. R. & Ozouf C, Costaz 1995.
Cybium 19 (4): 391-400, 6 figures.

7 cm

D=13, A=16·9, D/A=6·6, ll=34·4 (Huber - Killie Data)(You will need to be registered at this site to open this link).

n=18, A=20 (Huber - Killie Data).

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• Aphyosemion cauveti
• Callopanchax cauveti
• Roloffia geryi CI 6 / 93 Addis 1993. BKA Newsletter April 1994 No. 343
• A.sp.Etz - As circulated in the USA.
• Roloffia cauveti Kinda
• Roloffia cauveti GRCH 98 / 5

• Barrage de la Loire Atlantique GRCH 93 / 239
• Etz (Roloffia sp. Etz)
• Kamara Bounyi
• Kindia (AKA imports were originally distributed as a corrupted spelling - KINDA)
• Pastoria OMG-2018
• Siramousaya (GRCH 93 / 238)
• CI 6/93

Etz - Circulated in the USA as A.sp.Etz. Known to be still there in 2002. It is reputed to be a very shy fish.

Siramousaya - GRCH 93 / 238 - Close to Kindia from the north via Telimele. Some 11 kms before Kindia, in a small east-west running stream full of plant dbris & small branches. Only 1 male was collected at the first attempt. Local children guided the collectors down a path some 200 metres to a valley & a stream. The stream had been made into an irrigated area to grow crops of tomato, squash & cucumber. Each plot was surrounded by a ditch some 60 cms wide. Depth of clear, running water was 5 cm over 20-40 cms of soft mud. A lot of filament algae present. Fish collected included a 6 cm male. Further fish were found upstream. No measurements could be taken but it was hot & maybe 30°C water temperature. No other fish found in this biotope.

Loire Atlantique, 8 km after the town of Kindia on the road to Télimélé. Preserved material kept at the Natural History Museum Paris.

Foothills of the northern Guinee plateau. Occupies an area between S.geryi in the west & S.guignardi to the east. Distribution is likely to be restricted to the upper Santa drainage.
Collected 8 & 11 kms west of Kindia on the road to Télimélé. This area drains into the Santa river & then into the Kolenté.
Cauvet reported having fish from Bissikrima some 200 kms east of Kindia.

The Kindia location is 455 metres above sea level. Christian Cauvet collected this sp. in clear water with a flow & a high temperature. Water depth recorded at 30 cm. Water temperature recorded as being between 20 - 28°C.

Christian Cauvet sent me this information - 'During my 3 collecting trips for Roloffia, collecting places 238 and 239 were the only ones where I could catch quantities of wild adult Scriptaphyosemion. Scriptaphyosemion you can catch are mostly young fish, and very few fully developed as cauveti were. This was true whatever the season : I collected in November in SL and Guinea and in April in Guinea ( this is not true with Callopanchax...you can get big fish in November)'.

In 1991 André Lambert (then secretary of the KCF) gave Christian Cauvet fish caught in a stream near Kindia. Cauvet bred the fish & sent fish & photographs to Romand.

Raymond Romand was asked for an opinion & considered they may be a new species but hesitated to do a description as he had not seen live fish & the photos were of young fish. The area of this collection was vague & reported as a stream on the road from Kindia to Telimele.

Collected by Ch. Cauvet, J.M. Hervieux and R.Romand in November 1993 in 2 locations (Siramousaya & Barrage de la Loire Atlantique. Prior to this collection they were known as undescribed sp. in imports in England & Germany from a commercial collector in Guinea.
The Kindia location was not collected on this trip although it is only a few kms from the locations mentioned above.

The following is an extract from a paper by Romand and Ozouf-Costaz (Cybium, 1995, 19(4), 391-400) who first described A. cauveti as a new species. Unfortunately no information about water conditions in the paper. "The holotype (adult male) and allotype (adult female) were collected from a small brook after a small dam (the "Loire Atlantique") 8 km after the town of Kindia on the road to Télimélé. The paratypes comprise 8 specimens from the same locality as the holotype and 5 specimens from a small brook 11 km after the town of Kindia on the road to Télimélé, close to the village of Siramousaya".

Alan Green found some in a commercial import in 1993 & gave me some pairs. As it was something new I called them Roloffia geryi CI 93/6. These were bred & fish/eggs were distributed. I sent a photo to Eckard Busch who thought they were a red form of geryi.
Some months later I discovered a fish circulating in Europe called Roloffia sp. Kindia. In a search for more information Francisco Casado Pasamontes in Madrid sent me a letter with a copy of an article 'Roloffia sp. Kindia: Une Nouvelle Espece non Annuelle de Roloffia'. This was written in French. Christian Cauvet, the author of the article was informed by André Lambert at the 1991 KCF convention that he had 2 young pairs of a wild Roloffia species from Guinea but he could not identify them. He also had an Epiplatys sp from the collection. Cauvet was given one of the two pairs he had for identification & breeding.

Wright Huntley of the AKA kindly filled in the breeding box regarding breeding information on this sp.
A pair, kept in a window-lit 2.5G vertical drum bowl, spawned regularly in the hanging mops that went from surface to bottom. Most of the eggs seemed to be about a third of the way down the mop, but they were everywhere. Water was soft and relatively cool (120 ppm tds and 72-74F). Plants were mostly Java moss and no eggs were found in the moss, usually. Some Java Ferns (dwarf variety) were added later, as the fish seemed to like some structure to hover near, and quick places to hide. Sponge filter was going all the time. If I forgot to collect eggs for a few days, the mop would be so full that I had eggs all over my hands by just handling it.
Moving the pair to a 3G "Eclipse" tank caused a near stop to egg production until I noticed that all morning spawning activity was in the rather coarse
gravel, and not in the mop. Heavily planted with Java moss, Anubias (var.nana)on a driftwood "log", *Ap. crispus* Water Sprite and a Banana Plant, the substrate is about 2-3mm grains of a fired clay product sold in the US under the name "Flourite." The female seems to initiate spawning and leads the eager male to a spot on the gravel that she selects. There they act like a couple of foolish Salmon as they shimmy together and grind bellies into the rough terrain.
Considered to sex out after 6 weeks but can take 6 months to become sexually mature.

Cauvet bred his original fish using the natural method of leaving them to it in a well planted tank. Both adults & larger fry are cannilalistic so not too many fish can be raised this way. Higher temperatures were found to be better at 25°C. Fish will start to spawn at 20°C but are not so prolific.

I had fish up to F3 no problem. I did have a pure golden male apart from pale blue outer margins in the unpaired fins.

Golden form Photos courtesy of Michael Pidwirny

The fish as it starts to get colour in the unpaired fins

Christian Cauvet reported in BKA newsletter No.455, August 2003 that Epiplatys were absent in the wild collection places. He experimented in aquaria with keeping them with E.njalaensis & found they did not tolerate them & 'literally massacred them'. This could be the reason no Epiplatys were found as a sympatric species.
He later tried raising young cauveti with E.roloffi. The cauveti dominated the Epiplatys causing them to grow slowly to the point of wasting away.

It has been noted that another breeder raised A.pascheni festivum with cauveti without any aggression on the part of cauveti. They were raised in a 4' tank with Cardinal Tetra.