Apistogramma agassizii "Río Tefe Cacadora"

[exotic_idiot]

Congrates on your new spawn...
BTW what's "beta"?

[sheng]

Beta = second in command

Congrates on your new spawn...
BTW what's "beta"?

[SCOPE]

Con-grates again! Nice sharing!

[exotic_idiot]

Beta = second in command

Oic.. I still thought he mean Betta male and Betta female.. Haha
But why second in command?

[naturalmystic]

No fries from the first spawn
I guess the female was badly spooked while trying to remove the male (the pain of having too much hiding places).

In goes the beta male again
Again success and this time I made sure that the male is delicately removed (near impossible)

This morning saw the proud mama and her fries out in the open - first-time mother, finally. Will take a picture once my wife remembered to bring the camera back from her workplace. Is there any best time to remove the mother? My first time breeding them in a 1-footer. Contemplating on placing all of them in my Sakura tank to snack on the seed shrimps.

My alpha female (aka baby-making machine) is also guarding her (15th?) brood in the 4-footer but I'm not expecting any fries to survive.

[exotic_idiot]

Bro, you can try to lure them out during feed time much easy to catch them surprisingly..!

[naturalmystic]

Managed to get a shot of the group this morning.
Hmm.. Seems like the number of fries is getting smaller, down from 40+
Maybe the rest are hiding?

[sheng]

wow, the female so yellow in colour.
Very nice

[SCOPE]

Managed to get a shot of the group this morning.
Hmm.. Seems like the number of fries is getting smaller, down from 40+
Maybe the rest are hiding?

Wow...what a sight! congrates on your spawn

[naturalmystic]

An update on the group photo.
Hmm... Some fries grow faster than the rest.
Also my alpha female family in the 4-footer.
Working non-stop chasing the rest away.

[exotic_idiot]

I also encounter the same problem of uneven grow rates..
Some really big and some really small which i mean small as 1 big equals to 3 small but same age..?
My guess is the bigger ones intend to bully those smaller size and fight for food as i can see the smaller ones always get peck and chase around.

[joopsg]

Ben，this is normal. Usually the alpha or dominant ones will grow faster. If you keep them with the parents，the male will sort of give out some sort of chemical to slow down the fries' growth

[genes]

Chemical to slow growth? Interesting. Any literature?

[joopsg]

Sort of stunt growth thingy. But will resume growth when alpha remove

[naturalmystic]

I have 3 males that I bought from Joe.
The alpha male grew fast, as can be seen form the first few posts.
The beta male stopped growing; but went into hiding and suddenly its size is bigger than the alpha male. However, still being chased away by the alpha male.
The third male (charlie?) stopped growing altogether. It is about the size of my sole surviving Sparkling Gourami. I treat him as a backup just in case the beta male got fed-up and wage a counter-attack

[genes]

How big are your tanks guys?

[naturalmystic]

1x 4-footer planted community, 1x 2-footer planted nursery, 1x 1-footer planted breeding.
Expansion on hold pending CO's approval, been 6 months now

[leepwj]

Bought 3 pairs from bro SCOPE last month (Joe, out of 6, I think only one "developed" to be a female )

Past few days, the female (around 3cm) has been very aggressive towards all of my other tank inhabitants, including the male (around 4cm).
2 innocent Pygmy Cories and 1 Otos had already succumbed and are now swimming happily in fishy heaven.

Checked the tank last night, saw around 20 fries out in the open.
The main danger will come from my 20 Sparkling Gouramis, who as I typed, are hovering around the area.

Tried to take some pictures but somehow my camera is stuck at 4x zoom (16x zoom max).
Figured I need at least 10x zoom to take a good picture.

Here are some crappy pictures; not sure if the fries are visible at all .
They are on the driftwood.
Picture of male is at 8x zoom while female is at 4x zoom.

Happy spawning nice apisto.....

[naturalmystic]

Is there any best time to remove the mother?

I just saw a dead fry; scooped the mother and placed her in the 4-footer.
I guess that answered my own question
Remaining fries are about 1 - 1.5cm.

[naturalmystic]

Decided to move the fries (14 of them) to the shrimp tank.
Hopefully, there are enough seed shrimps for them.
Picture of my shrimp tank; please excuse the GSA, scrubbing them off on the weekend