29 for apistogramma lineta

Apistogramma lineta is a fish that i've wanted for a while and when an importer said he could obtain them and i noticed i had a spare 29 in the closet (in case one of my used 29s spring a leak); i thought - hum i have this corner by the door that might be just enough space for a 29....

The last fish i tried to buy as a. lineta turned out to be a. sp Blutkehl; these are not bad fishes and they have a nice personalty but i really wanted a. lineta.

(the fish i received instead of a. lineta):

careful mom



proud father



The first step is finding a place for the aquarium and putting in the glass braces for the corner matten filter. I'm mixed about matten - the alternative is a small zoo med canister filter which i have found very easy to clean and pretty reliable. Cost wise the matten filter is a bit less esp when we factor in shipping.



Next we add some substrate and check the distance from the door; since my aquariums have plants (even the blackwater ones) i like to make the substrate from 1.5 to 2 inches. It also allows the fish to dig a little and so forth. The substrate for nearly all species of apistogramma should be fairly fine grain (play sand would be good); this however is a little coarser as it is left over substrate i have sitting around; after all this is suppose to be an empty spare aquarium.



One of the nice things about the matten filter is i can place the heater behind it - no chance of a fish accidently bumping his head or getting a burn. After dealing with a number of heater failures and a sticky heater that took the aquarium to 95 degree; i use hygger heaters. They cost an arm and a leg but luckily not both arms so i can still work on the aquarium:



The problem with this configuration is the heater is vertical and when i do water changes it is critical to turn off the heater to prevent burn-out so i have a pile of these switches:




Now we need to find some nice drift wood - we have a few pieces left in our closet and so i like these two (not sure they will both fit but we will try:


These are esp nice since the under side have crevices on the under side - perfect for a fish that might need a place to hide (though in all truth a. lineta is a larger fish and probably wont' use them):



We like to soak our driftwood in a pail a few days to help remove dirt/and similar on the drift wood before using:



Dang it didn't fit so i guess i'll have to try again:


Oh well this is best done in the pet wash so i can fill it up all the way - so i lugged the 40lb container with water uptairs and put it in the pet shower and filled it up:
(now instead of 40lb it weighs 130 lb but i can just pour it out - good thing i waited till it got upstairs to fill it up):



Well that is it for today. Note that the aquarium is not yet filled since we might tweak the position. I kind of hate having it by the door but it looks like that is the only option. Next we will insert the drift wood and fill the aquarium up. After that we will add some plants and leaves. Then some dithers. And then sometime in the future - hopefully by Oct 25 some a. lineta.

Looking forward to this. I absolutely love apistos. I have some nice bits of wood in my shed but decided not to use in my recent re-scape. I don't have much luck with it even know it looks so realistic in an aquarium. It has always attracted bba for me.
Using rocks only I don't have to worry about tannins either.

EmmaS said:

Looking forward to this. I absolutely love apistos. I have some nice bits of wood in my shed but decided not to use in my recent re-scape. I don't have much luck with it even know it looks so realistic in an aquarium. It has always attracted bba for me.
Using rocks only I don't have to worry about tannins either.

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Well tannins is actually quite beneficial to the fishes; and with the species i'm keeping almost mandatory. Also i've not had an issue with bba in blackwater.

So i did a wee bit more today:

First i placed the two pieces of driftwood in the aquarium:


Don't really like it - the piece on the left can't be rotated as it is too wide - i could play with the piece on the left a little but this isn't great - check the storage room and had 3 more pieces - hum was going to use them somewhere else but this needs to be addressed soon - lets check them:

top

bottom was blurry oh well and piece #3
top

and bottom

Lets see how they look in the aquarium before we was them:

or

or

--
Ok lets wash those three while we think about it and put a wee bit of water in the aquarium:

This will detect a very slow leak and allow the substrate to settle - tomorrow or saturday we will play with the pieces again. My concern is want to leave enough room for the plants and that piece on the left is a bit problematic since it can't be moved much. I'll probably remove it and put it in the 40b and go with the first 2 pieces i found for this post. But only time will tell.... I might also wait till i plant the aquariums to see how things fit.

Could they be placed where they'd add height to the look, or did you prefer them flat? The piece that can't be rotated, perhaps if you placed it vertically somehow, it could add more space to be utilized and add more of a dynamic look to the tank?

CassCats said:

Could they be placed where they'd add height to the look, or did you prefer them flat? The piece that can't be rotated, perhaps if you placed it vertically somehow, it could add more space to be utilized and add more of a dynamic look to the tank?

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I don't think so; the only piece that is really suitable for a 'slant' is the one on the left by the matten filter but it is just too wide (I think) to be done effectively; unless i'm ok with it leaning against the glass (which i prefer not); the middle piece in the final picture is too thin to be effective as a slant - if it were wider it would work well - when i bring them back down i'll see if i have something a bit chunkier that can be used at a slant. In a wider tank i would put in some rocks across the driftwood but the 29 is just a bit narrow for what i have available. In the two 65s i have i did put a lot of drift wood at slants et all to build some height and make a lot of caves for the dwarf cichild that occupy them.

I always stayed away from the slender, iniridae type Apistogramma. Nice fish, but totally subjectively, I preferred the look of the higher bodied ones. What can you tell us about the fish going into the tank?

I'm not familiar with lineata, and I doubt many people here are. That's a rare one in the hobby.

Ah yeah, not wanting to lean against the glass is understandable. In certain cases it risks putting more force on the glass (though a 29 isn't as risky) but more I've found that it makes scraping algae off the glass a pain in the butt because the wood is in the way haha.

GaryE said:

I always stayed away from the slender, iniridae type Apistogramma. Nice fish, but totally subjectively, I preferred the look of the higher bodied ones. What can you tell us about the fish going into the tank?

I'm not familiar with lineata, and I doubt many people here are. That's a rare one in the hobby.

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It has the fins and body shape similar to the a. sp Blutkehl which i posted in a few places here but is more colourful leaning towards reds and pinks and the body markings are more linear (striped); as for behavior i could repeat what others have said but i'll wait for my own first and experience so check back in a year unless of course i fail to receive them. As wc fishes i'll treat them as pure blackwater with a target ec of 25 and ph ~5. I am unsure if the f1s have been tested in harder water though since they seem uncommon in the hobby that would suggest the mass breeders find them unprofitable either due to lack of interest (doubtful) or cost of mass breeding. Btw my next fish after these will likely be wc cockatoo (though in that case i will have to wait for an aquarium to open up so it might be a few years); those guys are stunning but vicious little monsters.

I kept 8 or 9 different imports of cacatuoides, all different enough. I never had aggression problems unless the tank was too small. They were pretty easy going, on par with all the others I kept and bred.

I still sometimes wish I could get one of them again - a yellow morph with enormous fin extensions on the dorsal, tipped bright orange. You could make an entire fishroom out of cacatuoides types alone.

I didn't like the blue morphs, though they were popular sellers. I like yellows, and the ones they bred the red morphs from, with just that tiny touch of patterning. I always bought the largest healthy female, as with wild caughts, she would be an experienced mother, and really take charge.

GaryE said:

I kept 8 or 9 different imports of cacatuoides, all different enough. I never had aggression problems unless the tank was too small. They were pretty easy going, on par with all the others I kept and bred.

I still sometimes wish I could get one of them again - a yellow morph with enormous fin extensions on the dorsal, tipped bright orange. You could make an entire fishroom out of cacatuoides types alone.

I didn't like the blue morphs, though they were popular sellers. I like yellows, and the ones they bred the red morphs from, with just that tiny touch of patterning. I always bought the largest healthy female, as with wild caughts, she would be an experienced mother, and really take charge.

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I was talking about wild caught and aggression to other species not inter-species aggression. Probably the only domestic species i would consider are borelli and that is mostly because wc haven't been imported in along time. The ones you are describing sounds like domestic. Having said that different catch locations do have variance in finnage and markings but the colours are more subdue.

I can't tell if that one pale wood piece looks like a dead frog or a sloth laying on it's back. Leaning sloth atm.

anewbie said:

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Well that is it for today. Note that the aquarium is not yet filled since we might tweak the position. I kind of hate having it by the door but it looks like that is the only option. Next we will insert the drift wood and fill the aquarium up. After that we will add some plants and leaves. Then some dithers. And then sometime in the future - hopefully by Oct 25 some a. lineta.

Click to expand...

I have limited apisto experience, none wild. I would suggest a few smooth smallish (say, 2 x 3 inch) flat-ish rocks for them to lay eggs on. Maybe use a largish rock to prop up a piece of wood or 2 to add height as CassCats said. Most dithers would like some higher cover.

I don't have anything against the glass, as anewbie & Cass said, it makes it hard to clean.

What plants & dithers are you looking at?

How will you cycle the tank before fish? Maybe you said & I missed it. So called "silent cycling" uses a LOT of mostly fast growing plants, but lower dosing of ammonia (1 -2ppm) too. Your timeline for adding fish seems optimistic but maybe your adding healthy biomedia from another tank's filter? That can help lots!

Will you quarantine the new dithers separately? Or maybe you have them & plants already in another tank? I go for a longer QT, 4-6 weeks minimum, but not from my own healthy tanks.

Folks if you wait till the build to proceed it will become clearer....

I only kept one domestic cacatuoides. I used to get the fish directly from the boxes as they arrived from Peru. That's why I saw such a variety. I just assume with Apistos that you have one species per tank, and a few fast dithers/distraction fish up around the surface. They never got much of a chance to pick on other species here.

It's going to be a good thread. Apisto fishrooms are great fun. I'll risk a short sidetrack though - do you think Apistogramma are making a comeback? They were big at the turn of the century, and for the last 10-15 years have sold very poorly. I used to unpack at least 4 shipments of cacatuoides a year, let alone all the other treasures coming in. Now it seems importers here have given up on them as the linebred ones have muscled wilds out of the market. When they order them, no one buys them. It's a shame, and I've long hoped that would change.