TROPICAL Butterfly fish

It’s so inactive that any guests you have around might think it’s dead, but Chris Sergeant thinks there’s good reason to get excited for Pantodon buchholzi.

SHUTTERSTOCK

CHRIS SERGEANT

Chris works in conservation research and regularly writes for aquarium publications.

IF YOU envisage an Africaninspired community aquarium, what springs to mind? A Rift Valley lake scene depicting brightly-coloured cichlids encircling their rocky domain? Maybe an Anubiasheavy Kribensis layout with dithering Long-finned tetra, Bryconalestes longipinnis, for added authenticity.

What it’s not likely to include is the treasure trove of oddballs that call the continent their home. From electrogenic elephantnoses and aestivating lungfish, through to prehistoric bichirs and hulking great Mbu puffers, Africa houses more than its fair share.

But such fish are named oddballs for a reason. They are nonconformist, challenging the aquarist’s view on what fish ‘should’ do and how you care for them, and as any community-keeper knows, the last thing you want is to disrupt a settled tank by introducing some piscine wildcard. But, for some at least, having a fish that swims against the tide is part of the appeal, leaving prospective keepers in a quandary.

As with everything in nature, there is an exception, and if ever a fish deserved the oddball moniker, it’s the idiosyncratic African butterflyfish, Pantodon buchholzi.

Taking wing

While their genus name Pantodon translates as ‘all tooth’, in practice, they are far more amicable than their binomial description suggests. Named after Professor Buchholz, the scientist who described the type specimen, they are the only member of the family Pantodontidae, part of the bonytongue order Osteoglossiformes - an order that contains the likes of arowana, featherfin knifefish and mormyrids.