[Previously published in Cichlidae Communique, Journal of the Pacific Coast Cichlid Association, #92, October/November 1995.

Then editor of the journal, Kurt Zadnik, was infamous for badgering articles out of members and passers-by until the authors yielded, a talent envied but rarely duplicated by the hordes of other aquarium society editors.]

The following events lead to this article:

• 1980: visited and lived in Nigeria for a year.

• 1982-87: visited Nigeria almost on an annual basis.

• 1990: managed to keep matters hush at the Chicago ACA convention.

• 1991: Zadnik finds about my trips and begins campaign of harassment about writing an article for him (International Cichlid Conference II at Orlando)

• 1992: Article not written. I skip ACA Louisville convention due to guilt and shame.

• 1993: Zadnik tracks me down at ACA Minneapolis convention and continues relentless jabs about my failure to write the article. I go into therapy (California-style) to help me deal with my guilt and shame.

• 1994: Brimming therapy-boosted pseudo-confidence I brave ACA San Antonio convention having heard a rumor that Zadnik was going to be absent. Alas! My nemesis!

• 1995: Therapist says "Give it up son, wouldn't it be easier if you just wrote the damn article?!"

• 1997: Our missions complete, Zadnik quits the hobby, packs his bags and moves to some place in Ohio.

I was a lucky teen. My parents worked for the United Nations and as a result, I traveled with them to many countries, soaking up different languages and cultures. I'd kept your bread 'n butter aquarium fishes since the early 70's and when I arrived in Nigeria, I was quite disappointed to find the country quite devoid of pet stores and their usual stock of guppies and mollies. So, I focused my attention on non-fishy flora and fauna back in 1980. Soon after that, I began attending Purdue University back in the U.S., and that's when I caught the cichlid bug. I went back to Nigeria during the summers on a yearly basis till 1987.

The exact location was Port Harcourt, a large, modern city in the Niger Delta, flourishing from oil money. It is in Southeastern Nigeria, about 5°N of the equator and about 100 miles from the Cameroon border. It is hot and muggy 10 to 11 months of the year, except for a few weeks in December and January when a dry, dusty Saharan wind called Harmattan cools things down a bit. It then looks foggy but it is actually fine dust particles. This is a good time to collect because the pools and puddles are shallow.

While most of you probably think of Pelvicachromis, when you think about collecting in Nigeria, I found these fish to be difficult to find. It was a lot easier to observe and study Hemichromis species and assorted Tilapiines; they were everywhere! Tilapia sp. are found all over the tropics now, due introduction but it is no reason to treat this interesting group of fish in a sub-cichlid manner. Hemichromis certainly are popular but the most common varieties are the line-bred aquarium strains often sold as "Turquoise Jewels."

The joys of collecting are immense, but there is a definite freedom in knowing that you don't have to get back to the US for another three months. This gave me an opportunity to observe groups of fish in the wild and then after a few weeks, collect a few of them and place them in my aquarium for observation of behavioral changes brought on by "domestication."

Most of my collecting locations were around the Niger Delta, near the resort of Lake Oguta, near the village of Ahoada and the numerous streams near Aluu. Aluu and Ahoada are about 20 miles apart and have thousands of pristine streams, creeks and rivers, all of them with blackwater. The dark waters give some of the larger rivers an ominous look. I often went collecting alone in remote places and once while mucking around in one of these ominous rivers, up to my chest in water, I saw a crocodile slide into the water on the opposite bank. A couple of seconds later, a giant dark object brushed past my thighs. After panicking, I found out that the object was just a large tree trunk. I don't remember if I "peed" in my pants but I remembered that I never learned how to swim when I was a kid! I struggled back to the shore, dried myself, drove home, and taught myself how to swim and went back to the same location with a first aid kit and a big knife. I was enthusiastic but foolish.

My enthusiasm for travel and collecting may match Heiko Bleher's but I'm no Heiko Bleher. Things often get spooky when alone in the jungle for hours and your mind begins playing tricks on you. When I felt that way, I almost always got out of the water and settled for observing the fish from above the water, on sold ground. I escaped Bilharzia but an acquaintance didn't; it is a parasite transmitted through snails. If you're in Africa and you begin urinating blood, look into Bilharzia treatment.

It is difficult not to appreciate the importance of non-cichlid aquatic fauna and flora when in the wild. When acquiring cichlids from a pet store, it is easy to ignore other groups of fish and purchase cichlids, but in the wild, cichlids are part of the big picture. I also collected Synodontis spp., Clarias sp., Malapterus sp., (Electric Catfish.) I grabbed an Electric Catfish caught using hook and line with my wet hands. Enthusiastic but foolish.

The only Anabantid I caught repeatedly was Ctenopoma kingsleyae (a nice, brown, wiener-looking fish.) Of course, you run into a lot of Aphyosemion sp. and Epiplatys sp. but since I didn't have room to house killies, (ahem) I just fed them to my prized Hemichromis fasciatus. The Killi Police has been on my tail about this for 10 years! All I have to say is: perspective! As far as Characins, the most common fish was Brycinus longipinnis. I think they are sold as "Long Finned African Tetras" in the pet trade. I'm still amazed how these fish make it to the pet stores &endash; I couldn't keep the alive long enough to take them home. In my opinion, they were the hardest fish to transport. I knew there were aquarium fish collectors operating in the area but to obtain contacts and phone numbers, I'd have had to bribe a few people. No thanks. I also managed to collect a fine specimen of a Polypterus sp. and a few Mudskippers (Periophthalmus sp.) on the island of Buguma, south of Port Harcourt. If you get off your boat on to mudskipper "flats", you quickly sink about 2 feet into the clay; it's an original way to lose shoes.

As far as cichlids, I saw large numbers of Tilapia nilotica and Hemichromis fasciatus. These two species share an interesting history. H. fasciatus have been known to attack Tilapia guarding fry and consume their fry. They are also reputed to be solitary, vicious animals but from my experience observing these predators, I found them to wander around in packs or in breeding pairs. These fish seem to form remarkably stable pair bonds, both in the wild and in captivity. Very rarely have I seen solitary individuals in the wild. I wish I knew if they are pack hunters; one distracts the parent Tilapia and the others in the pack attack and eat the fry. I do not know of such behavior reported in cichlids but I also do not know of anyone conducting field studies of feeding habits of this fish in the wild. I've seen aquarium literature claiming their maximum size to be about a foot but the largest specimen I saw was 7"TL. These fish are the Velociraptors of the cichlid family, fast vicious, medium-sized and highly "intelligent."

They're extremely intolerant of conspecifics of the same sex in captivity I wish I knew the sex ratios of the roving pack of these fish I saw in the wild. I once released a captive specimen back into the Ahoada River and watched it sit still for almost an hour until a pack of conspecifics swim by, at which time it joined the pack. They will consume Tilapia juveniles almost a third their body size and the relationship of this fish with Tilapia nilotica in captivity is thoroughly captivating. Both these fish seem to possess a large vocabulary of mutually comprehensible body language. Constant communication takes places even if the two species are at either end of the aquarium. Tilapias seem to recognize H. fasciatus and consequently pounds on the latter, but pounder and poundee appear resigned to this fate.

I've been observing similar recognition (?) behavior in one of my Pike cichlids (Crenicichla proteus) at home. The pikes spawn frequently and they are housed with some relatively peaceful cichlids like Biotodoma cf. cupido and Laetacara thayeri. I had added two species of tetras into the tank, Black Neons and a micro-predatory tetra (Crenuchus spilurus) of the same size. While both characins would make a convenient mouthful for the pikes, the Black Neons were eaten and the Crenuchus left alone until the pikes spawned. Once they spawned, the predatory tetras were harassed (more than the cichlids) and eventually killed, but not eaten! Why are two characins of the same size treated differently? The parents 'recognize' potential predators of their offspring, but what characteristics do they base their 'judgements' on? The other cichlids, meanwhile, were beaten into submission so that the pike fry could almost graze on the mucous on the back of the Biotodoma.

Back to Nigerian cichlids: I unfortunately did not see many species of Pelvicachromis. I collected some of the blue morph of P. pulcher. These fish were found with Hemichromis cristatus, Brycinus longipinnis, Ctenopoma kingsleyae, and a few species of Epiplatys. The habitat was not blackwater. The water was clear, cool (24°C), and soft with a pH of 6.5. They preferred the same habitat as H. cristatus, sifting through the mulm near vegetation. They'd venture out into the open sandy areas a little bit but retreat into the vegetation if I approached. The H. cristatus was a little more comfortable remaining over the light-colored sand. I almost always saw these two species in the northern delta region in riverside pools and the best place to observe them was near Lake Oguta about 50 miles north of Port Harcourt.

I vividly remember a rock I perched on while I watched these fish I used to sit there for hours with the equatorial sun beating down on my bare back. Somehow, I don't remember anything about the heat and the humidity. I'd still rather not be anywhere else in the world. Those were the best days of my life, old enough to enjoy life and young enough to not have any cares. The purity, peace and serenity of the locale haunt me to this day. (Author's note 1998: having been to the Amazon since this article was originally written, I think I can add a couple of places that I'd rather be as well)

Besides P. pulcher, I did not see any others of the genus. I am sure it was because I didn't look in the right places perhaps, I didn't understand their preferred habitats. The same happened with Chromidotilapia guentheri; the only specimens I saw were near-dead adults with some local boys who'd just caught the fish. Oh well, maybe next time. Another species of Hemichromis I kept was H. elongatus. For additional information on this species, see Buntbarsche Bulletin (Journal of the American Cichlid Association) issue number 162 from the summer of 1994. If you happen to look up that article, please remember that the photos were mislabeled as H. fasciatus, defeating the purpose of the article. Fry from their spawn was distributed around the Tampa Bay area in Florida where I lived at the time. Unfortunately, I've yet to see imported specimens of H. fasciatus. Unless otherwise demanded, local fish collectors will throw out attractively colored species and continue exporting common (in the hobby) species.

I also kept H. cristatus collected from pools near the Igbo River (pronounced eebo). These were delightful fish with great coloration and a very acceptable disposition. They were fed live mosquito larva, live bloodworms and live earthworms; all foods were collected daily from my backyard. These fish learned to eat earthworms from my fingers within 3 days of being moved from the wild! This species seems to have become a part of the hobby in the U.S., but I feel it deserves a wider audience. An interesting observation about Tilapia zilli: I had a pair and some juveniles of this fish in a 40-gallon tank. The male for some reason would panic and bash into sides of the tank or attempt to jump out of the tank if the tank was aerated. I considered the possibility that the air bubbles were frightening the fish but the above mentioned negative reactions would only occur about 15 minutes after the air pump was turned on. The female had no problem and after an hour or so after turning off the air pump, the male would go back to behaving normally. I don't know if it was the increased oxygen or the decreased carbon dioxide that the fish found objectionable. So, to keep enough oxygen in the tank, I'd turn on the air pump for 15-minute intervals a few times during the day. I'd like to hear any explanations that any of you out there may have.

I haven't been back to Nigeria since 1987 and I sure miss the purity and the wilderness or what is left of it.

Collecting Article Index
• Collecting in India
• Collecting in Nigeria
• Collecting in Brazilian Amazon
• Collecting in Peruvian Amazon
• The Hobby in Thailand

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