Lokoja

Wild fish from the original collection
Photo courtesy Dick Cox

Wild male from the original collection in 1978.

Wild female from the original collection in 1978.
I am indebted to Dick Cox for digging these photos out.
Codes
 None known. None assigned to the 1978 collection anyway.
History

Discovered by Stanley 'Livingstone' Cox (brother of Dick Cox BKA editor) while working in Nigeria at Lokoja, 400 km south of Kaduna. Found in a very small natural drainage ditch that was completely hidden & choked with grasses. He accidentally stepped into this & found a male 'gardneri'. After many hours of searching he collected 3 males & 5 females which were sent to Dick in the UK on 23rd December 1978. Dick bred them & distributed the progeny. . It would appear that this ditch eventually drains into the River Meme. (BKA newsletterNo.166, June 1979).
Dick mentioned a purple sheen on the lower half of the body on wild fish.
First breeding attempts were done with mops but no eggs were found. Later, peat fibre was used & 25 eggs were found & water incubated. After 18 days 3 fry emerged but the remainder were at various stages of development with some still being clear. Unhatched eggs were put into peat & dry stored.
The fry grew well on brine shrimp & Paramecium as a first food & started fighting after 3 weeks where they were put in a cool dark area of the fish house.
The main batch of fish including the wild fish all died after the fish house thermostat stuck on. The 3 fry in the cool survived along with a pair given to Tom & Beryl Scates. These were the origins of all distributed Lokoja at this time.
Dick asked his brother to try & find some more from the wild but couldn't find any fish as the biotope had completely dried out. He traced the stream bed to the main river & concluded that it was unlikely that fish from this area could reach the river as the area started to dry out.
This population will take a dry storage period of 2-3 months quite happily & I would consider a longer period to be possible. My eggs were put on a layer of damp peat & hatched when the eye was clearly visible.

A form has been circulating in the USA & is still known to be in captivity over there in 2005. I am not sure of the pedigree of this line. Have they been collected more recently?
Images

Lokoja taken around 1980, possibly F1 or F2.
These are true colours of my stock from the original
collection of this population.

Lokoja taken 2001. This was the fish circulating in the USA at the time.Note green body cast. Photo courtesy of David Ramsey.

Lokoja. Wild male taken around 1980.Photo: courtesy Dick Cox.

Original photo of the first wild import of Lokoja into the UK. Photo: courtesy Dick Cox.

As left. A blue cast to the body. It is interesting to compare the above originals with these 2 photos.Photo courtesy of David Ramsay.

Tank of F1 Lokoja from the first import into the BKA in 1978.
Photo courtesy of Dick Cox.
Breeding Notes
Roger Gladwell in the UK has found this population will incubate in dried peat for 10 weeks comfortably & have been taken up to 5 months & still looked like they could go longer.
Traits
  
Variability
  
Notes