Ember Tetra Hyphessobrycon amandae

Quick Stats

Tank Setup

The Ember Tetra (Hyphessobrycon amandae) is one of the smallest tetras in the hobby and genuinely one of the best nano fish you can keep. A 5 gallon tank is the floor for a school of 8–10, but a 10 gallon gives them room to swim and lets the school behave like a school rather than a tight ball of stressed fish. They come from slow, tannin-stained tributaries of the Araguaia River basin in Brazil, so they expect warm, soft, acidic water with leaf litter and overhanging vegetation.

Maintain water parameters within: temperature 23–29°C, pH 5.5–7.0, hardness 2–12 dGH. They tolerate a slightly broader range than their wild conditions suggest, but they colour up best at the acidic end — pH 6.0–6.8 with a few degrees of general hardness. Push them into hard alkaline tap water (pH 7.8, GH 15) and the orange fades to a washed-out peach within a few weeks. I run my ember tank at 26°C, pH 6.4, GH 4 and the fish look like someone switched on a light inside them.

Set up the tank with dark sand or fine gravel, driftwood, and dense planting — Java fern, Anubias, Vallisneria, and floating plants like Salvinia or frogbit. A few Indian almond leaves on the substrate release tannins and recreate the blackwater look they come from. A gentle sponge filter is plenty; they don't like strong current and they don't produce much bioload. Avoid bare-bottom tanks — embers go pale and skittish without substrate and cover.

Tank Mates

Ember Tetras are peaceful, short-finned, and completely non-nippy. That combination makes them one of the safest tetras to mix with bettas, dwarf shrimp, and other delicate nano species. They occupy the mid-water column and ignore fish that don't compete with them for food.

Compatible tank mates include: other Ember Tetras (mandatory — they school), Celestial Pearl Danios, Chili Rasboras, Pygmy Corydoras, Otocinclus, Betta fish (in a 10 gallon or larger), Cherry Shrimp, Amano Shrimp, and Nerite Snails. They also work as dither fish for a single Apistogramma or a pair of Ram Cichlids in a 20 gallon. Avoid anything with a mouth large enough to swallow a 2 cm fish — that rules out angelfish, gouramis (except sparkling and chocolate), and most barbs.

Schooling is non-negotiable. Eight is the floor; ten to twelve is what I aim for in any tank 10 gallons or larger. A group smaller than eight will hide, lose colour, and spend the day pressed against the back glass. In a proper school they become a glowing orange cloud that moves as one organism across the tank — and that is the entire reason to keep this fish.

Diet & Feeding

Embers are omnivores. In the wild they eat tiny crustaceans, insect larvae, and aufwuchs off submerged wood. In the aquarium they accept micro pellets, crushed flakes, frozen daphnia, frozen cyclops, and live or frozen baby brine shrimp. The key is size — they have small mouths, and standard flakes are too large to swallow whole.

Feed small amounts twice daily. Crush flakes between your fingers before dropping them in, or use a dedicated micro pellet (I use New Life Life Spectrum Nano and Bug Bites Tropical Small Granules). Twice-a-week live or frozen baby brine shrimp keeps the orange deep and the fish active. A flake-only diet works for survival but the colour drifts toward yellow over months.

They are surface and mid-water feeders, so floating or slow-sinking foods work best. They will not compete with bottom feeders for sunken pellets — feed Pygmy Corydoras separately with sinking wafers after lights-out if you keep them together. Embers will pick at biofilm and soft algae but they will not control an algae bloom.

Common Health Issues

Ember Tetras are hardy once established, but they are small enough that water quality problems hit them fast. The single biggest issue I see is pale, hiding fish — which is almost always a water chemistry problem (too hard, too alkaline, or ammonia/nitrite present) rather than a disease.

Like all tetras they are susceptible to ich when stressed by temperature swings or new-tank ammonia. The standard heat-and-salt treatment works, but raise temperature slowly (1°C per day) and stop at 28°C — pushing it to 30°C to defeat ich fast will stress embers more than the ich itself. Copper-based medications work but dose at 75% of label rate; tetras are sensitive to copper and embers doubly so at 2 cm.

Prevention is straightforward: stable warm temperature, weekly 25% water changes with dechlorinated water, and quarantine new fish for two weeks before adding them. Embers typically live 2–4 years in good conditions, with the upper end coming from cooler tanks (24–26°C) rather than the 28–29°C upper limit.

Breeding

Ember Tetras are egg-scatterers and surprisingly easy to breed in a dedicated tank. Sexing is straightforward: females are rounder and slightly larger, males are slimmer and a deeper, more saturated orange. Condition a group with live baby brine shrimp and frozen daphnia for a week, then move them to a 5–10 gallon spawning tank at 27°C, pH 6.0–6.5, with a spawning mop or dense Java moss.

Spawning happens in the early morning. A female scatters 30–100 adhesive eggs among the plants or mop; the male follows and fertilises them. Remove the adults immediately after — they will eat every egg they can find within hours. The eggs are light-sensitive, so dim the tank or cover it with a towel for the first 24 hours.

Eggs hatch in 24–36 hours. Feed the fry infusoria or commercially-prepared liquid fry food for the first three days, then graduate to vinegar eels or live baby brine shrimp. Ember fry are tiny — smaller than a grain of rice at hatch — and need microscopic first foods. They grow steadily and are free-swimming within a week, taking on the orange tint at around six weeks. This is a great first egg-layer breeding project for a beginner.

Frequently Asked Questions