Educate me. Breeder tank

[GaryE]

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@GaryE I find your description of cockatoo contradictory. Every species of apistogramma i've bred including cockatoo the male has not participated in actual rearing of fry. When the frys get older they have migrated to him esp if the female as a new brood but he did not actually care for them beyond providing them a safe haven in guarding his territory.

Interesting. I found males would drop into a position at an angle to the brood, and keep a close eye on things. I had males of several species roll fry in their mouths and spit them out, which is generally seen as cleaning them off. Both sexes did that.
The female was always on duty, but both fish would shepherd fry. Both would charge if I disturbed them.
I can't think of one species where the male didn't take an active role. I'm sitting here running things through my head, but the males were right there with all of them. The roles were different, with the bigger, more robust males doing a lot of scanning, and staying in a defensive position moving with the fry.
Maybe we have differing definitions of broodcare? I don't see anything contradictory in what I'm saying - it's very consistent. Maybe we have seen different behaviours, or maybe there is an interpretation issue? I'd consider close in defense of the fry (not the territory) and getting down into the gaggle of fry to be broodcare.
The pair bond would break down after a few weeks, and that was a dangerous time for the fry. I'd remove them, or the parents when I saw that happening, if I had somewhere for them to grow out.

 

[gwand]

This the Rashomon Effect. See the film Rashomon by Kurosawa.

 

[anewbie]

Interesting. I found males would drop into a position at an angle to the brood, and keep a close eye on things. I had males of several species roll fry in their mouths and spit them out, which is generally seen as cleaning them off. Both sexes did that.
The female was always on duty, but both fish would shepherd fry. Both would charge if I disturbed them.
I can't think of one species where the male didn't take an active role. I'm sitting here running things through my head, but the males were right there with all of them. The roles were different, with the bigger, more robust males doing a lot of scanning, and staying in a defensive position moving with the fry.
Maybe we have differing definitions of broodcare? I don't see anything contradictory in what I'm saying - it's very consistent. Maybe we have seen different behaviours, or maybe there is an interpretation issue? I'd consider close in defense of the fry (not the territory) and getting down into the gaggle of fry to be broodcare.
The pair bond would break down after a few weeks, and that was a dangerous time for the fry. I'd remove them, or the parents when I saw that happening, if I had somewhere for them to grow out.

I don't think it is different defn - every book and every expert in the narrow field of apistogramma such as tom c (tomc.no) would say otherwise. The species i have recently bred include:
a. sp winkelfleck (the female will attack the male if she sees him)
a. cockatoo (was a while ago but hte female kept the frys in the back an the male stay in front of a 16 inch wide aquarium)
a. sp blutkehl (the female is fairly passive to the male as long as he stays 4 or 5 inches from where she is feeding the frys)
a. wolli (the male is permitted near hte frys but he ignores them)
a. bitaenita (the male has nothing to do with frys)
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You can read tom's website on m/f behavior or you can look it up in cichild atlas but i don't think you will find another reference that describes the male actually raising the fry - 'cept perhaps if the female dies.
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The general rule of thumb has been the male needs a place to hide while the female is breeding so i find your description counter intutitive.

 

[GaryE]

I've written stuff on Apisto behaviour that went through peer editing with no problem. I must have had some very genial male Apistos. I certainly never saw one hide from a female during broodcare.

Who is Tom? Bear in mind I stopped keeping Apistos 20 years ago, and don't know the active people in that corner of the hobby. That's not meant as disrespect to Tom.

I've only bred 25 of the described species of Apistos, and quite a few of the one off arrival, undescribed or unclassified ones. Probably, some of those have been described since. I hope so. I would say about 40 species and morphs. You would have loved the scene around 2000, when new foms were arriving with almost every shipment. It's a shame people stopped buying them, and they stopped coming.

I also kept quite a few others I had less success with, where I could only get one pair, etc. But there's no intuition involved to counter. Just observation. We've noticed different things, which is always interesting. I think it's most likely an interpretation of behaviour issue, although set ups, etc, can influence things.

 

[anewbie]

I've written stuff on Apisto behaviour that went through peer editing with no problem. I must have had some very genial male Apistos. I certainly never saw one hide from a female during broodcare.

Who is Tom? Bear in mind I stopped keeping Apistos 20 years ago, and don't know the active people in that corner of the hobby. That's not meant as disrespect to Tom.

I've only bred 25 of the described species of Apistos, and quite a few of the one off arrival, undescribed or unclassified ones. Probably, some of those have been described since. I hope so. I would say about 40 species and morphs. You would have loved the scene around 2000, when new foms were arriving with almost every shipment. It's a shame people stopped buying them, and they stopped coming.

I also kept quite a few others I had less success with, where I could only get one pair, etc. But there's no intuition involved to counter. Just observation. We've noticed different things, which is always interesting. I think it's most likely an interpretation of behaviour issue, although set ups, etc, can influence things.

Tom, Frank and Mike are folks who are defining the genus and classification. If you go to the link i provided it talks about them - if you look at the blog page it shows new species that continue to be discovered every year. The issue with these new species is which complex they get grouped with or determining if they are simply different colour forms. They are not doing dna alaysis which will eventually come later as it did with the cory groups. Still the pages have a lot of useful information on catch location, behavior and so forth. This year there was an influx of some less seen species but there are few importers for exporters to ship to for a lot of these newly disocovered and rarely seen species.

 

[anewbie]

@GaryE my best guess is the fish you thought were cockatoo were mislabeled and a different dwarf cicihld. If you had pictures of these fishes it would be helpful but everything you said about them contradict what I know and what others have described. However it is quite common for exported fishes to be mislabeled and the easiest means to resolve this would be to see pictures of the fishes in question.

 

[GaryE]

@anewbie - guess away.
I never had cockatoos, just Apistogramma cacatuoides (Hoedeman 1951). I might also have had luelingi (Kullander 1976) and probably had and bred juruensis (Kullander 1986). The last two were uncertain identifications, because the collections were commercial. The collection localities fit with the type locality info, but you can't always trust the fishermen. All I had to go on was Linke and Staeck, American Cichlids 1, Dwarf Cichlids (1994), Baensch, Koslowski, Richter plus the original descriptions from Kullander. I never got hold of Hoedeman's paper. I guess I was probably wrong.
I bred Apistogramma linkei and staecki. They knew their identifications. The Linke and Staeck book is very limited, given its publication date, but you should look for a copy. It's still good for what was described up to then.
Unfortunately, digital photography in the 2000 era wasn't common. My cacatuoides shots from then have almost no pixels and are grainy. If you can get into the archives of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, you'll find good 35mm shots of most of them accompanying articles.

I think we've veered into the uninteresting for anyone else here. You're a good breeder - very good, and we both like these fish. Let's leave it there, and continue on.

 

[anewbie]

@anewbie - guess away.
I never had cockatoos, just Apistogramma cacatuoides (Hoedeman 1951). I might also have had luelingi (Kullander 1976) and probably had and bred juruensis (Kullander 1986). The last two were uncertain identifications, because the collections were commercial. The collection localities fit with the type locality info, but you can't always trust the fishermen. All I had to go on was Linke and Staeck, American Cichlids 1, Dwarf Cichlids (1994), Baensch, Koslowski, Richter plus the original descriptions from Kullander. I never got hold of Hoedeman's paper. I guess I was probably wrong.
I bred Apistogramma linkei and staecki. They knew their identifications. The Linke and Staeck book is very limited, given its publication date, but you should look for a copy. It's still good for what was described up to then.
Unfortunately, digital photography in the 2000 era wasn't common. My cacatuoides shots from then have almost no pixels and are grainy. If you can get into the archives of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, you'll find good 35mm shots of most of them accompanying articles.

I think we've veered into the uninteresting for anyone else here. You're a good breeder - very good, and we both like these fish. Let's leave it there, and continue on.

cockatoo was the original name for a. cacatuoides. Since it is easier to spell i use it
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I never had luelingi or juruensis so no comment on those species.

I do recommend for anyone buying a species of apistogramma to visit tom's site as it has a lot of useful information.