Apistogramma cacatuoides: More than 1 male in 29G?

[Colin_BC]

I recently acquired a trio of wild-caught Apistogramma cacatuoides (1M:2F). I've been planning on crossing the wild cac's with some brilliant tank-bred specimens. I currently have the cac's in my planted 29G (tons of hiding spots & caves). I just found out that tomorrow I can get ahold of some very nice triple red cac's. These are exremely hard to come by here. I've been looking for almost a year. I will have to grab them (2-3F, 1M) tomorrow if I want to guarantee I can get some nice specimen's, but I'm unsure of how well 2 males will get along in the same tank. I do have more tanks to seperate them eventually, but first I have to let my pulcher fry (FKA Krib's) get a little bigger before I can sell them and clear out my 32G.

Will 2 males be fine together in the same tank for about a month? My current wild male hides most of the time, but I don't know what would happen if another male were to be in the tank... Any thoughts? I do have a divider I could put in place until another tank is ready...

Colin

 

[longhorn13]

i got what i originally thought was 1m:3f for my 33G long, but after closer inspection, i found out i had 2m:2f. there hasn't been a problem. one of the males is very large and colorful and the other is just starting to show signs that it's a male. the larger male will chase any of the three that get anywhere near his area and as long as the others don't get in his way or direct sight, everything is fine. the 33g long is 4 feet long, how long is your 29G?

 

[apisto_uk2]

Hi,

I also had 2 males and 2 females in a 48 x 24 x 18 and one male beat up the other quite bad until I removed the victim into a seperate tank. Just thought I'd give you a different opinion as I think it will just depend on the characters of your fish. You may be lucky or not as the case may be.

Cheers

Apisto

 

[Colin_BC]

I came to the same conclusion (1 male per tank) after talking to an apistogramma-cichlidiot at the big LFS. He showed me a huge (250G?) display tank he put together with some blue rams and a really nice cactuoides triple red pair. The guy told me that there were other males in there before, but the one remaining male killed them. The male has brilliant red and black finnage, and the female has a bright yellow body with red on the tips of her fins. The only way he'll sell those right now is if someone buys the full tank set as well. If he doesn't have any luck soon, he may rip it apart and let me know once the cacatuoides are available...

Colin