Silvertip tetra

Water parameters

Tolerated range for this species. Aim for the middle of each band rather than the extremes.

Tank and habitat

Substrate: any.

Behavior

Plant interaction: plant safe.

Feeding

Omnivore that eats anything: flake, pellets, frozen bloodworm, frozen brine shrimp, frozen daphnia, live food. Feeds in the midwater and upper water column. Active feeder that gets its share in community tanks. Feed twice daily. Color improves with a varied diet.

Compatibility

• Active, slightly assertive tetra. Similar temperament to bloodfin tetras: peaceful in large groups, nippy in small ones. Groups of 8+ are recommended.
• Good with other active community fish: barbs, danios, rainbowfish, and larger tetras. Avoid delicate, slow, or long-finned species.
• The white-tipped fins are the visual highlight. In a large school against a dark background, the coordinated movement of white fin tips is eye-catching.
• Hardy and tolerant of a range of conditions. A good tetra for beginners who want something slightly different from neons.

Origin and habitat

Hasemania nana, the silvertip or copper tetra, is a small, hardy characin restricted to the Sao Francisco River basin in Minas Gerais, eastern Brazil, where it lives in small, acidic, tannin-stained tributaries. Lutken described it in 1875. After years in the family Characidae it sits, following recent phylogenomic work, in Acestrorhamphidae. The genus Hasemania is unusual among tetras in lacking an adipose fin, the little fleshy nub most tetras carry between the dorsal and tail fins. Males glow a warm copper to golden-orange with bright white tips on all the fins, the feature that names the fish, while females are paler and more silvery-brown. It reaches about 4 cm, a maximum near 3.8 cm standard length. It is an active, faintly nippy schooler, calmer in a good-sized group, and all trade fish are captive-bred, making it one of the easier and more widely available tetras. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.

Breeding

A simple egg scatterer along standard tetra lines. A conditioned pair spawns at dawn over fine-leaved plants, scattering a couple of hundred eggs, and since the adults eat the eggs they should be removed once spawning is done. The eggs hatch in about a day to a day and a half, and the fry take baby brine shrimp within a few days of becoming free-swimming. Breeding is easy for a beginner.

Common problems

There is little to go wrong; this is a tough, undemanding tetra. The main behavioural note is nipping: a silvertip kept in too small a group can turn on slow or long-finned tankmates, but a proper school of eight or more settles that down. Ich on new fish responds to standard treatment. The usual complaint is cosmetic, the copper and white showing best over dark substrate under warm light and looking washed out on pale gravel. It lives a typical small-tetra span of about five to eight years.

Bioload

Further reading

• How to cycle a fish tank
• Stocking ideas by tank size