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Adventures
with Apistos
Scott
Buckel
GPASI
Journal , Winter
1988
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As
many of you know, I am not particularly interested in large fish.
In fact, the only larger fish that I have an interest in are rainbowfish
and angelfish. I have recently discovered a new group of tiny fish
that have endeared themselves to me--Apistogramma and other
South American dwarf cichlids. So I may recently have become a cichlidiot.
I will present several aspects of my experiences with this group of
fish, including the acquisition, care, and breeding of these fish.
Generally, you will not find any of these fish in a pet shop. To acquire
them you have to look rather long and hard to find them--unless, of
course, someone in the Society is interested in Apistos. Frequently,
if a shop has Apistogramma, they are wild-caught specimens, and there
are many problems associated with these (see "Wild Caught Apistos,"
reprinted in GPASI Journal, Winter 1987) but tank-raised
specimens are very hardy. A close relative of the Apistogramma
is the "ram," formerly Apistogramma, then Microgeophagus,
now Papilochromis ramerizi, and this fish is commonly found
in petshops. This fish fits nicely into a community tank.
I had seen photographs of Apistos in fish books and magazines,
but I had never owned any until fairly recently. One day while I was
in New Jersey and had a few hours to spare, I decided to see at least
one pet shop. I visited the Ocean Gallery (advertised in FAMA) in
Montclair. They had a very impressive collection of marine fish; in
fact, they had a number of species that I had never seen previously.
They also had six species of rainbowfish, several Pelvicachromis
species, some African cichlids, both top- and bottom-spawning killies,
and Apistos. In fact, 90 percent of the fish in this shop
were unusual, and very few were the more common fish that usually
comprise most of the fish in a pet store.
Well, I had to decide among six different Apistos, and purchased
two pairs due to the price of the fish. I chose both Apistogramma
corumbae and "rotpunkt." My decision was made easier
by the fact that I could feel confident that I was buying pairs; the
other types were too young to distinguish males from females. I carried
my fish onto the plane, and they were acclimated into tanks about
four hours later.
The A. corumbae pair were put into a divided ten-gallon tank
that was heavily planted, and I rarely saw them for the first week
or so. I conditioned them with frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms,
live blackworms, and baby brine shrimp. They spawned about two to
three weeks after I bought them. They did not use the flowerpot I
had given them, but used the side of the aquarium adjacent to the
flowerpot. The eggs were pink, looking a little like (pink) red blood
cells. The pair both guarded the eggs, but they disappeared about
three to four days later. About a month later, I noticed that the
male was at the top of the tank, hiding in the plants, but a day or
two later was down on the bottom of the tank. I really didn't think
too much about this since I didn't see any other evidence of a spawn.
I was away about two weeks later, when Steve Smith called to tell
me that there were corumbae fry in the tank. The presence of the plants
and regular feeding of the pair with baby brine shrimp had helped
to keep the unnoticed fry alive. For the third spawn, I noticed they
had used the flowerpot, and these eggs were a very bright red color,
but since there were fry in the tank, the female looked rather bothered
by the presence of the fry. I removed the 43 fry, but she ate the
eggs anyway. The fry were transferred to a 2.5 gallon tank filled
with water from the home tank and a small sponge filter. The fry had
been and continued to be continuously fed baby brine shrimp. The fry
tank had 25 percent water changes two or three times a week. The fry
grew fairly quickly and were turned in for BAP points in August 88.
I have since had a spawn in which the female beat up the male so badly
that he died several weeks later. Just recently the female spawned
once again and one of her sons fertilized the eggs. I plan to maintain
this species.
An interesting note is that this fish (A. corumbae) is pictured
in the breeding section of Paul Loiselle's recent book, The Cichlid
Aquarium, where a pair is shown with a spawn. The eggs shown
are a golden color, while as you will remember, I said that mine were
red. My pair of fish look identical to the pair shown in the Loiselle
book, so I am not sure how to interpret this apparent contradiction.
I have not been so fortunate with the "rotpunkt." They spawned
twice, but I never saw any fry. The pair has since died. I had conditioned
them in the presence of a small group of rainbowfish and corydoras
catfish. They appeared to be doing well, until their untimely death.
During this period I had done some more reading about the Apistos
and with my somewhat limited success decided to try to spawn several
more different species. Tim Adkins and I went to Akron to see their
fish show and to go shop hopping. At Wet Pets Plus we discovered a
tank of wild-caught A. bitaeniata. We decided to buy all
of them and then divide them when we returned to Pittsburgh. (At this
point we also met Pete Mange, who has a store just north of Buffalo,
and he told us that he normally carried Apistos in his shop.
More about him later.) Unfortunately, we lost one fish on the way
home, and the others did not look very good. After a couple of weeks
we were down to two males. Tim eventually sold these two at a recent
Youngstown auction.
Tim and I decided to get out of town one Friday and visit Hamilton,
Ontario, and Buffalo, and New York, to go shop hopping. We bought
Apistogramma steindachneri and A. trifasciata at
Pete s shop. I put my groups into a divided ten-gallon tank that was
heavily planted and filtered with a sponge filter. The fish were conditioned
as I described before. The group of steindachneri that I
bought had mostly males, while Tim's turned out to be mostly females,
so we traded a male for a female. After about three weeks of care
they spawned, and since there were so many fish in the tank I artificially
incubated the eggs. I took some of the tank water and put it in a
2.5-gallon tank, put the clay pot in the tank and waited. The eggs
hatched in three days, and the fry were free swimming within the next
four days.
They were old enough to be turned in for BAP points in October, but
I decided to wait until the November meeting to turn them in so they
would be larger. Since I had so many fry, I decided that I would keep
a dozen or so to maintain the species, and would sell the adults to
make room for the trifasciata. The adults and some of the
fry were sold at the Youngstown auction. For reasons that I do not
completely understand, I lost both spawns at about ten weeks old.
Between these two spawns there were about 150 fry. Of course I sold
the parents before I turned in fry for BAP. I think that I shouldn't
have had that many fry in such a small volume of water, although I
was changing 25 percent of the water almost every day.
Recently, the trifasciata spawned in the presence of four
other trifasciata (one male? and three females?), but the
poor female was unable to defend the fry against her tankmates.
From my successes and failures, I have decided on an approach that
I will use to spawn and raise Apistogramma trifasciata. The
tank will be maintained at about 78-80 degrees, at a pH of about 6.5.
The pair will have a ten-gallon tank that has several different small
clay pots to be a cave substitute, and it will be well planted to
provide for a hiding place for the male if the female becomes too
aggressive. I will leave the fry with the parents until they are several
months old, and then I will remove the fry and put them in a separate
tank. I will not remove them earlier, since I have noticed that the
fry grow much faster in the tank with the parents. If for some reason
I decide to raise the fry artificially, I will use a much larger tank
than I used before.
A very good new book, The Complete Book on Dwarf Cichlids,
by Hans-Joachim Richter, has recently been published by TFH. It contains
much useful information and many color photographs, and I recommend
it to anyone interested in Apistogramma or other dwarf cichlids. |
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