How to differentiate female Apistogramma agassizii and A. cacatuoides?

[yampeck]

Hi,

Recently i'm considering keeping apistos again after my pair of Caca. Orange flash passed away last yr after quite a couple of yrs with me.

Went to Y618 and saw afew nice ones. Thought of getting a pair but there're 2 species there, the agassizi and the cacatuoides. While the male is easy to differentiate, i'm afraid of getting the wrong female species to pair with it. Or is it ok for the 2 species to get paired up?

And also there's a high possibility that the few apistos there should be siblings right? Any inbreeding problem / defect for offsprings of such pairings?

Thanks!

[stormhawk]

I don't have images but I believe to differentiate them is not too difficult.

Female A. cacatuoides have a lyre-shaped tail, with 2 pointy ends at the top and bottom. The agassizii female should have a roundish tail. The agassizii female should have a more pointy head, and the caca a little more shorter and stockier.

If paired together wrongly, they might not breed, or they might. But the eggs may never hatch. I don't think they would hybridise with each other, but why take chances.

As for the "sibling" issue, I'd advise you to buy the male and female from different sources, in this case different LFS. If they were siblings bred on the farm, there is a high chance that the offspring may get weaker with each generation, and you might end up with fry that may have defects like a bent spine, or lousy colour and finnage perhaps. It's a gamble with sibling-to-sibling pairings. You can get a pair from this shop, and get another female or another pair of the same species and strain from another location, just to increase your chances of a non-sibling pairing.