What happened to my Apistogramma cacatuoides double red.

[anewbie]

And the egg place is her territory.

It matters because it affects tank set up. It's not just a fish watcher's debate. I went with the male territory view for the first 10 years I kept dwarf Cichlids, but since I started designing tanks for multiple territories there has been a lot less violence. I bred my first Apistogramma in 1993, although I switched exclusively to West Africans 10 years ago.

First of all i don't want to talk about dwarf cichilds; i want to talk about this explicit species. And yes having places for both the male and female to hide is important as well as a tnak large enough for them to escape each other and establish 'territories' but regardless we do not know how large this aquarium is or how it is scaped. I saw nothing in this thread that addressed either of those issues which i why i raised them. I suspect the male has claimed a large portion of the aquarium simply because he has been there and the female is being added and i suspect he is killing the female - but even that is speculation due to lack of information on this specific case.

Also please don't say you bred apistogramma; name the explicit species as different species have different behavior and requirements. For example i keep one set in a 10 gallon as they are quasi-bonding and the viciousness between m/f is very minimal when she is caring for frys. I'm so tired of people referring to 'apistogramma' behavior because it creates a lot of ambiguity when one person is talking about cockatoo and another is talking about nijjensi since they have very different behavior.

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I re-read your earlier post about giving the female her tank and then adding the male; i agree thta he has likely already claim this aquarium but i think a picture and size here would help a lot. a properly laid out 20 long should be fine even if you add the female later - but a wide open aquarium is going to be problematic even if it is a 40b.

 

[GaryE]

The point about tank size is essential. I agree with you 100% that we should have asked.

Of the ones I bred, I never used a 10 except for borellii. I favoured 20 longs, 15s and 20s.
I never found a huge difference in aquarium set up, outside of borelli and sp Vielfleck. I bred agassizi, alacrina, biteniata, borelli, cacatuoides, caetei, commbrae, cruzi, eunotus, geisleri, gephyra, gibbiceps, hongsloi, hoignei, linkei, macmasteri, njisseni, norberti, ortmani, panduro, regani, rubrolineata, staecki, tucurui and veijita among the described species. There were probably a dozen more undescribed ones.

I tended to avoid the slender bodied ones. But the upshot is I have seen a few males and females fight. I liked using 20 longs for cacatuoides. I only bred linebred double triple reds a couple of times, but used set ups like that for four or five different wild caught morphs. Almost every shipment of them brought a different colour or fin form - cacatuoides is very diverse.

Breeding these fish was kind of a job, in that I used to sell articles on the new arrivals in the hobby. They are diverse to look at, but behaviourally very similar.

 

[anewbie]

The point about tank size is essential. I agree with you 100% that we should have asked.

Of the ones I bred, I never used a 10 except for borellii. I favoured 20 longs, 15s and 20s.
I never found a huge difference in aquarium set up, outside of borelli and sp Vielfleck. I bred agassizi, alacrina, biteniata, borelli, cacatuoides, caetei, commbrae, cruzi, eunotus, geisleri, gephyra, gibbiceps, hongsloi, hoignei, linkei, macmasteri, njisseni, norberti, ortmani, panduro, regani, rubrolineata, staecki, tucurui and veijita among the described species. There were probably a dozen more undescribed ones.

I tended to avoid the slender bodied ones. But the upshot is I have seen a few males and females fight. I liked using 20 longs for cacatuoides. I only bred linebred double triple reds a couple of times, but used set ups like that for four or five different wild caught morphs. Almost every shipment of them brought a different colour or fin form - cacatuoides is very diverse.

Breeding these fish was kind of a job, in that I used to sell articles on the new arrivals in the hobby. They are diverse to look at, but behaviourally very similar.

I guess this is a bit off topic but i'm surprise you found (for example) nijsseni similar to cockatoo given that the nijsseni are more or less pair forming vs the cockatoo harem nature. Of the wilds I think agassizi has an enormously large diversity in wc forms. Yea there are a lot of different species. Most are harem breeders but a few are 'quasi' pair forming (male might be opportunisitic or they break up after a couple of seasons depending on a number of factor). macmasteri lean towards pairs but male is open to polygamous behavior and such. Some of what i'm saying is first hand experience but some is more hersey. Some species are clearly more aggressive than others - my nijsseni could be very aggressive while my borelli seemed a bit more passive. I have no clue how domestication (or we could call commercial inbreeding) have changed species behavior.

 

[GaryE]

I never really bothered with harem breeding. I don't like the term - it is multiple female territories and one malec- any male. The female chooses the male.

I never kept multiple females in a tank (after a few early disasters) unless the tank was quite big. I think it makes sense to look away from the male to the females. njisseni females were ferocious about their caves. cacatuoides females less so, but I think I had more deaths from fighting with them compared to any others. They were the easiest to breed though, if the pair bonded. I mostly had females knocking off males. They hit them at the junction point of the gills, from below. It's really frustrating when your pair has bred a few times, and that happens.

I had one that was a jaw dropper, an undescribed sp.where two males took turns fertilizing the eggs of one female. There was zero conflict. The behaviour is fantastic across all Apistos.

An experiment to try, if you have a good budget or have raised adults is to set up a female only tank and watch. I did that with njisseni, eunotus and veijita. A lot happens in there. You can add a male, or even rotate males. But mess with even one nest and it gets rowdy.

Fun fish. It's too bad the OP had that misfortune.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

@anewbie and @GaryE nice to see two very experienced keepers share their experiences. Nearly all of it is above my head, but it's still fascinating, and I'm sure there are other lurkers benefiting from the combined wisdom and voices of experience.

 

[anewbie]

It matters because it affects tank set up. It's not just a fish watcher's debate. I went with the male territory view for the first 10 years I kept dwarf Cichlids, but since I started designing tanks for multiple territories there has been a lot less violence. I bred my first Apistogramma in 1993, although I switched exclusively to West Africans 10 years ago.

I wanted to get back to the topic of female territory; my personal experience has been for the most part that 'female' territory only exist when she wants to breed but during the periods when she has no interest in breeding she is not so territorial where the male always has territory - yes she is far more vicious when guarding her eggs/frys than the male but less so during other times. Is this accurate with regards to your experience or have your females continued to be territorial when taken a break from breeding. Again i think there is some divergence by species and individual. I did have a female nijsseni that after a while decided she owned the entire tank (29) but she was never aggressive towards her male and after the male died (bloat; not female attack); i moved her to a new aquarium and she ceased to be territorial (at least she hasn't been for the past 8 months); my pucallpaensis (which are not a true apistogramma); the female is not territorial at all 'cept when breeding but then she herds the frys around the entire tank and pretty much claims the entire tank center around her current position; she allows the male to approach the frys (they are quasi-pair forming) and there is not so much violence between them (these are wc); though in truth the male doesn't do much in the way of care; I guess what I'm saying is that the female territory seems more nest oriented but she has no problem moving her nest so her territory is always changing (or willing to change) while the male seems much more fixed.

 

[GaryE]

Everything we do is coloured by tank size. I wish we could set these fish up in large tanks and see what does or doesn't happen.

I think territorial behaviour is always nest oriented. The different with males is they hate other males, most of the time. I've never been sure that relates to place markers.
West African Pelvicachromis will respect a rock, for example, and 2 males will eyeball each other with an understanding that is the boundary. Apistogramma here just expanded their range. They moved in on each other constantly, and never accepted boundaries. A. borellii did here, but none of the larger ones seemed as place oriented. Females were.

So if I look at a territorial tetra that holds a clump of plants against all comers, I'm not sure how that differs from an Apisto male.

I bred pucallpaensis in 1997, and thought they'd be great for see this because they are so small they would be possible to keep many in 4 foot tanks to see how they sorted things out. Then I lost my entire fishroom to an icestorm, and have never seen that fish since.

When my Apisto pairs would go wandering, almost always it was the pair. My males across species stayed involved and the broodcare was both of them. The pair could break up after raising the young. They'd usually get back together quickly, but I had males killed when they didn't cooperate. I figured the tank size was at fault, but also that the female was clearing out the useless to her male. It went both ways, but with cacatuoides, I lost more males. I probably worked with 20 pairs over the years, as strangely for our conversation, cacatuoides and njisseni were my favourites. If I was using a 24 inch tank, that was fine for getting fry. But to watch behaviour, a 3 or 4 footer was better. I didn't have the resources to do it right.

Older females past breeding age were like younger males not quite there. They had no reason to burn energy defending a nest, so they didn't.

I've watched a fair bit of underwater footage of Apistogramma with fry, but all it has done is made me more curious. Some of the habitats are shallow and static, but a few have been deeper with a current. and the female moves the fry through conditions we could never recreate in a small tank. I wondered if they could actually get back to their starting point in the current, and if they bedded down in a wider zone, where they found shelter. The problem with a diver filming them, or a go pro is you only get snippets.

We think we're doing well if a pair has 3 or 4 caves, but with the wood debris and the leaf litter in the wild, the pair would have hundreds of shelters to choose from.

I've spent the past few days dealing with the side effects of the yellow fever vaccine as I am planning a trip to western Africa this summer, during the mini dry season. So I will be able, I hope, to learn a lot about the dwarf Cichlids I encounter there, though killies are my main target interest. I'm hoping to bring back killies, dwarf cichlids and barbs, but even if I can't, I have serious fishwatching plans. It doesn't help with SA Apistogramma, but the behavioural differences aren't that vast. I'll learn something.

 

[anewbie]

Everything we do is coloured by tank size. I wish we could set these fish up in large tanks and see what does or doesn't happen.




I bred pucallpaensis in 1997, and thought they'd be great for see this because they are so small they would be possible to keep many in 4 foot tanks to see how they sorted things out. Then I lost my entire fishroom to an icestorm, and have never seen that fish since.

It is funny that you mention this because I am setting up two 4x4 for this very reason in the next 45 days. One will get my pucallpaensis which is primarily a white water fish though i will also add some cupid like species (wavrini) and leopoldi as they seem to be native to pucallpaensis habitat with the hope that the two larger cichild tend to the open area and the pucallpaensis to the more dense plant areas. I do have a plan b if there is too much competition for the pucallpaensis and can remove the other cichild if need be. Btw several places were carrying pucallpaensis earlier this year - and it seems males come in two different colours (probably catch location); one is more reddish and the other more yellowish on the fins.

For the 2nd i'm debating between 3 different species all known to be 'gentler' and good candidates for colony: abacaixis, megaptera, bitaeniata with bitaeniata being my first choice if available. This will be a true blackwater condition (borelli would be another option but i don't see wc very often); and the competition will be primarily hatchet fishes and pencil fishes. Unlike the above aquarium there will not be much competition for these cicihld.

 

[GaryE]

My plan would always involve one species, one tank. Different approaches, neither better nor worse.

My pucalls had yellow/ivory fins.

 

[kribensis12]

Just dropping in to share an experience.

Line bred Orange Flash Cockatoos for 2 years. Sometimes the tanks were are small as 10g.

Females owned the territory. Males fought each other, but not females. I successfully kept a M/F pair in a 10g and it worked very well. There were 3x where I almost removed the female because SHE was ready to breed and he was not.

I attempted a harem approach and the male/female bullied the others and kept their pair with each other.

Just another perspective to add in!

 

[GaryE]

I'm really sorry the dwarf Cichlid hobby has fallen away as it has. The importer where I got my Apistos doesn't carry them anymore because they take up space due to poor demand. The change in hobby fashions away from breeding and back to ornamentals and predators has come at a cost. In the States, with 330 million people, small importing companies can hold niches, but in less populated countries, people can only get the linebred ones. Since to me, the curious thing about Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis is diversity, the designer fish don't cut it.

There is so much to see and to learn about with these complicated little characters.

 

[kribensis12]

I'm really sorry the dwarf Cichlid hobby has fallen away as it has. The importer where I got my Apistos doesn't carry them anymore because they take up space due to poor demand. The change in hobby fashions away from breeding and back to ornamentals and predators has come at a cost. In the States, with 330 million people, small importing companies can hold niches, but in less populated countries, people can only get the linebred ones. Since to me, the curious thing about Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis is diversity, the designer fish don't cut it.

There is so much to see and to learn about with these complicated little characters.

Were you aware that cockatoo apistogramma are all born female? I can't remember the study on this, but it was very interesting to read.

At roughly the 30 day mark, the environmental influences determine their gender.

There is a breeder is S. Africa who has a male Cockatoo that successfully bred, then transitioned to a female and bred again. CRAZY!

 

[GaryE]

There are a lot of fish where gender is determined by environment. 26 degrees will give an even(ish) ration according to some Apisto and Pelvicachromis studies - actually if I recall 26.5. I have been able to influence gender in some killifish species, but there are no 'rules' that apply to all. people always want to know how to control these things, but species by species by species.

From breeding pretty large numbers of Pelvicachromis over the years, I think there are intersex individuals. All those shoaling males that don't breed are an interesting thing.