My Apisto agassizi breed.Advise Please!!!

**chris168** · 21st May 2011, 10:35

It all started from yesterday which i found my male agassizi had been wack and chase by the female which usually won't be happen on the normal days. After the female done chaseing she will swim back to her cave guarding her cave which i find that maybe she had lay her eggs inside. Useing my torch light to see i found 10 over eggs inside the cave. But today morning the eggs become lesser !!! What should i do to prevent the eggs getting lesser????

**Stormz** · 21st May 2011, 10:49

I think maybe you can try to isolate the male to a breeder box first then observe.

**rexmus** · 25th May 2011, 00:22

is there any other fish threat?

**chris168** · 26th May 2011, 21:32

Hi remus, my female agassizi had already eaten up the eggs. Guess maybe is her first spawn...hopefully the fry will be fine on the next spawn

**Tucker** · 27th May 2011, 17:00

Hey Chris,

My apisto's did the same thing, after a couple of tries they got it right and had a large batch spawn and I have about 30 fry growing now, they supposedly also eat the eggs if they get scared or stressed as well so if anything else in the tank is stressing them out this could also be a problem - mine are the only pair in my tank so this is not an issue for me. My male and female take it in turns looking after the fry and when one is looking after them they chase the other away.

My trick to stop them attacking each other is to put a breeder box on the side of the tank about 8cm below the surface and put a small cave into it and leave the lid off the box. I then catch whichever parent is being attacked and put them inside the cave. The other parent doesn't ever seem to swim up and chase them out and so far seems to be quite a good method and seems to keep them both safe from each other. When they are hungry or want to some out they can simply swim out and also know how to get back in when they need to get away. Hope this helps.

**chris168** · 27th May 2011, 17:10

Hi Tucker, Had been a week since the last spawning fail so now i'm looking forward on the next spawn and shall hope it will be a good one. Thanks for your advise.

**Tucker** · 27th May 2011, 17:42

Lol Dude, the Eheim Peat = Apisto sexy time lol works for me always

**Stormz** · 27th May 2011, 18:27

Hi Tucker, I'm using Sera Peat in my canister for my 2ft tank, will it suffice? Currently, have not tried anything else, just heard some recommend Peat will be good for the PH to stabilize the little ones. Does it help for all type of Apisto or is there some which are not too sensitive to the PH levels? I having 2 pair of Borelli and a pair of caca orange flash in my 2ft currently. Any comments?

**Tucker** · 27th May 2011, 23:26

Hey Stormz,

I use the Eheim Peat which is similar and again I stick it either in my Canister or in the tank itself depending on the tank size and I have not had any issues with spawning. I find that most of the dwarf Apisto's seem fine with a range of PH levels but I am now trying and keep mine around the 6.5 range or so - apparently this is the best range to get a mix of both male and female fry so that you don't have a one sided mix of either only males or only females. However how reliable this information is I am not sure - I suppose once I have a few more batches I can provide some further info but that will have to wait a bit.

At the moment I have sold off most of my dwarfs except for my Pelvicachromis Taeniatus 'Moliwe', 'Kienke' and 'Nigerian Red' which I am trying to focus on at the moment, I am picking up a pair of Ivanacara Adoketa next week to try breeding so I am looking forward to seeing how that goes as that will be my first pair.

In my experience I believe that as long as the tank is set up well, with lots of little caves and plants for your fish they will have no trouble breeding and half the time I am pretty sure I don't even need to add the peat - however it does seem to speed things along.

I do find that a 2 foot tank does not leave too much room for any of the parents to flee once their partner becomes aggressive, my Nigerian Reds parents for example can be on opposite sides of their two foot tank, but once they see each other they will still attack. So I think that if you would like to breed your fish you may need to move the breeding pair out of the tank into another one so the parents wont harass or kill the other fish.