Hi everyone,

I have a couple of questions stemming from the following situation:

I had a pair of apistogramma erythrura housed in a 29 gallon planted tank. with 13 black neon tetras and 7 rummy nose tetras
The male was behaving odd over a long period of time, his behaviour became worse gradually but in came down to hiding most of the time, not eating, pale and overall very lethargic.

It died in the end without any clear indication of cause.
Water Parameters were looking acceptable: PH around 7.5 nitrite 0 and nitrates around 10

The other fish were doing good and so was the female apisto. I waited a week to see if any other fish would end up with similar symptons and eventually bought another male apisto erythrura.

Introduced the male and the female turned almost instantly yellow with a black stripe across her sides and was flaring and tail slapping at the younger male and following him around. At first he didn't seem impressed and ignored her,
some days later he was doing the same. After a lot of reading I identified it as typical breeding behaviour and was quite excited this just happened 2 days after introducing the male.
Especially because he is about her size.

Now here comes what puzzles me: the female is now hiding most of the time. When I see her she still remains very yellow colored with black marking on her face not very clear stripe, but seems also very lethargic.
I see her sometimes rapidly moving her mouth as if something is bothering her.Mainly she hangs around in between the plants.

Now I of course hope she has simply spawned there and i might see some fry appearing soon, but since I lost my male before when displaying such behaviour I'm a bit concerned for her.
She's not aggressive towards any other fish coming nearby where she usually hangs out now. this is being going on for around 8 days.

So my questions are:

If she is in breeding mode and that yellow colored could she still be sick?

Is it possible the new male stresses her out to the extend of hiding and I completely misinterpreted their behaviour while its just pure agression?


Happy to hear any suggestions experiences about this type of apistos en general as they do not seem very commonly kept?