Lyretail Panchax

A. australe comes in a two colours. The wild type are brown and called 'chocolate' in the aquarium hobby and a man made 'gold' form exists which is orange; this form was spontaneous mutation bred by a Finnish aquarist name Hjerssen in 1952. JJ Scheel in "Rivulins of the World World (TFH PRess, 1970) pointed out these were not a separate species and deprecated the name Aphyosemion australe hjersseni. An Albino strain appeared from the "hjersseni" strain around early 2022 and there are also darker "chocolate" and "spotless" varieties in the aquarium hobby. Males can reach a length of around six cm, with females being slightly smaller. The caudal fin is lyre-shaped, which is characteristic of the genus. The females also are less colourful; their body colouration is brownish tan for the wild form and a light tan for the gold/orange form, and they have rounder fins.