New post about Apistogramma!

[Inspire91]

Hello!
Im going to change it up today from my usual aquatic plant posts and show an excerpt from my blog about Apistogramma! Beautiful little dwarf cichlids that go very well with a planted aquarium!
Click the link below to head over to my blog and check out the rest!


This particular species lacks flashy colors which are a staple of the genus, but it definitely makes up for it with its beautiful finnage, as you can see!

Thanks for your time!
Inspire91

[exotic_idiot]

Wow, Very interesting collections you have there...
Your apistogramma viejita3 looks good and apistogramma rotkeil got very big beautiful finnage.
Lovely pictures....

[Inspire91]

Thank you very much

[roy]

Sorry to hi-jack this thread.

I'm starting a tank to keep apisto and I noticed the active apisto buying at the Merchant section. Knowing that only one pair can be kept in a 30ish gallon tank really bummed me out. There're so many beautiful apisto!!! I would like to know how many pairs do you folks keep in a tank. Please state size of tank and the type of apisto if keeping more than 1 pair.

Based on my research, I would go for Apistogramma Agassizii or cacatuoides. What other apisto get along with afore-mentioned?

Ultimately, I aimed to keep apisto long enough without the little guys dying on me and, hopefully, breed them.

Mine is a 33 gallon planted tank with ample caves and driftwoods. Still cycling tank and not adding apisto until water params stabilised. Hope to hear from AQ's apisto shi-fus.

[Jitticus]

Well, you can basically go with any of the species. Most of them do marvelously well in a planted tank. Except you might find it hard to harvest the babies when they spawn.
If you want something showy go for the colorful and large one - cacatuoides, agassizii, breitbinden, blutkehl, rotkeil, inka - these all have showy finnage.

For those with color on the bodies - you have elizabethae, pandurini, pebas, viejita, borelli, rositae, abacaxis, rotpunk, hongsloi,

And for sheer attitude theres - diplotaenia, taeniacara candidi, apistogrammoides pucallpaensis, iniridae - these have nothing much going for them other than being very engaging.

[Inspire91]

@roy - while it's true that you should keep 1 male to a tank of about 25-30gal. you can keep more than 1 female, if it's possible get a male and a few females. That would give you some buffer for aggression and let's your male have choices. As for most Apistogramma, in the wild, a male claims a territory, while females do not(until they have laid eggs), and freely go between different male's territory.
Sometimes when you just stick a pair together, and force them to get along, they won't jive with that :P and then one will kill off the other. If you are only able to get pairs, then get dither fish, that also sometimes trigger's the pair to breed when they have other fish to defend their territory from.
Out of the ones that Jitticus pasted above, pandurini, viejita, borelli, rositae, cacatuoides, agassizii, and inka are among those that you will have an easier time breeding as opposed to the others listed above which may be a bit more challenging due to their sensitivity to water parameters.
As for me, I kept a pair per 10gallon tank, but I kept my female separated (inside the tank) until I saw that they were flaring and showing with one another, also a clear sign is if the female begins turning yellow, at which point I introduced the female into the main area of the tank with the male, and kept a close eye on them as to make sure there isn't any over-aggressive behavior.
Hope this helps
GL

[roy]

Thanks GL. Extremely helpful info though I must say pretty much inline with what I've researched so far. I vaguely recall it might be ok to keep two males plus females from different sub species, say, agassizii and inka or cacatuoides and hongsloi. Is that right?

cheers

[sunnydaze]

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/galle...imageuser=3392

i used to keep all male.

[jssl]

The key question is whether are you into breeding. If you are not, it doesn't really matters how many pairs so long you can break their sight and comms with more pairs or other community fishes to reduce the aggression.
The real problem is when 1 pair is in breeding mode.

Hope it helps.

[roy]

Nah, breeding wouldn't be my ultimate goal. Mainly to keep them long enough for them to strive. Breeding would be a bonus. Anyhow, got me a pair of A. Njesseni yesterday which would make them the final residents in my community tank. I'll try out other Apistos after my current pair are gone.

Btw, my male doesn't show any blue colouration. How to bring out the colour? The guy about 1+ inch long.

[Inspire91]

Goodluck with the njisseni! As for enhancing color, you could use color foods, but those tend to be pretty harsh on the fish`s digestive system as, naturally they don`t eat all of the various ingredients put into those foods. I`ve heard from a pretty reliable and experienced breeder, that if you do feed them color enhancing foods, (i.e. tetra color bits) they will definitely show more color, but they tend not to live as long as if you were to feed them the sort of foods they would encounter in the wild, and vice versa, feed them naturally occurring foods, and they wont show as strong colors, but they`ll live longer. Up to you really, I`ve always stuck with naturally occurring foods, as I want to see the fish for how it is in the wild, not with unnatural coloring. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, and this issue only really applies to wild specimens as they are more sensitive, and tank-bred, or aquarium strains can handle color enhancing foods more easily.
Hope this helps your lack of color issue! As for the mixing of species, it is doable, I`ve had my share of "singles club" tanks, where I lost the other half of the pair and could do nothing with the other half that is still alive, and so they all went into one tank, they did fine, although decor helps the aggression.

[Apistoinka]

Hi guys finally manage to find apisto kaki... Anyway thread starter nice apisto u have... Well would like to enquire a 3ft planted tank can put how many apisto of same kind or diff kind in... As I dunno how to count in gallon of water... so need some guide from pros here... Used to have them due to moving house gave now wanted to start back so where to buy them now any info???