WOOO BABY APISTOS!!!! : )

[Peter Lovett]

Hi Seb

BBS can be fed to apisto fry as soon as you see them free swimming. I strain mine though a pair of tights and rinse in a bowl of tank water by dunking the tights in and out bout ten time and let it drain. Also only make enough that you will feed in 3 day. After this time the BBS have used up there yoke sack.

Hope this helps.

I make and feed BBS on a more commercial basis having over 10 specie of apistos with spawn and about 500 fry in total but the principle is the same. If you would ever like to see some rarer Apistogrammas and you are more than welcome to come and visit PM me

regards,

Peter Lovett

 

[Seb R]

Thanks for the BBS advice

lol pond , he'd love it...

If I take the babies would it upset the female. Not being a hippie, peace lover or sentimentle but I personally (just my opinion) don't really agree or feel comfortable with taking fry away, if they are clever enough to look after thier young then they must be clever enough to develop a certain relationship. Mabye me being sentimentle.
Though if it saves lives I guess I would have to...

#edit#

oh and in hindsight if I did seperate them I guess I couldn't re-introduce them when bigger and I dont have a spare tank or really the funds

 

[Seb R]

Ok I have acted (will am about to). This morning I realize that I opnly have about 9 fry left, from about 13. Also I saw my male really go at the shoal about 3 times in a minute, more than just parental concern me thinks.

So I'm going to get a divider, the half way measure if you like. Female + babies on one side, male on other. Afterall the tank is 1ft x 2ft in area so it should be ok.

How long until the fry are old enough and big enough to fend for themselves?

 

[pnyklr3]

The safe bet would be when they can't fit into the male's mouth, but that mouth is pretty big! It will be a few months before they are that size, IMO.

I agree somewhat about taking the fry away from the female, but for a different reason. I think the fry should stay with the female because of the way the female will parade them around the tank when they look for food, and how she will gobble up a stray fry, and spit him back into the group! Good Luck, the divider should work.

Perhaps give the male a little more space than the female. Remember that his territory usually encompasses a few females and their territories, so his should be a little larger. But as I type this I am realizing that other fish will be growing up with the female and taking up space too.......heck, do whatever you want; I have no brains at the moment

 

[Seb R]

Well the male wasn't too happy, so I decided to let him back after a bit, the female missed him too! and perhaps I jumped to the wrong conclusion too early, seems I have more fry than I imagined (although with a 8-9 hour day I dont get enough time to see them!).

But now this is weird. The female has taken all the babies into a shell (about 5 inches long) and isn't taking them out as much. Ok so mabye she is just hiding them a bit, but the thing is she keeps zooming to a pot about 2 inches away. Now I'm pretty sure there aint babies in there, could she have laid more eggs?!

oh apologies if I jump to conclusions, but its a steep learning curve for both myself and the fish. Thanks for evryones advice, if it hadn't been for you guys I'd be up the creek without a paddle, so thanks to all!

 

[Seb R]

WOW I was right, about 100 eggs easy!! (had to peek)

well she keeps tending the babies (although I cant see them) and tending the eggs. Anyone ever had this before?!?

Should I do anything

 

[pnyklr3]

What color are the eggs? Red is good, white is unfertilized. Make sure that she keeps guarding the cave, if she doesn't guard for a least 3days, check again. I checked a cave once, saw eggs, and the females ate them all less than a day later (possibley that night). If a female feels like her eggs are in jeopardy, she'll eat them (think I may have said that already....am I beating a dead horse? ) Looks like you are REALLY going to need a grow-out tank for all of the fry!

 

[Seb R]

lol sadly yup, looks like it

To make sure the fry don't get neglected (she wont take them out of the cave!!!) should I remove them for a few days, wait until the new eggs hatch (think they were all fertile) and then put the fry with the new fry? I've got the perfect place to put them for a bit, and it would just mean that she has less stress and gaurd the eggs better right?

this pic shows both the pot (with the eggs) and the shell with the fry (its the biggest one at the bottom) Cant be fun for the lil babies to be in there all day...

http/i2.photobucket.com/albums/y34/sebraaff/DSCF0207.jpg

 

[pnyklr3]

Yikes. Ok, couple ways to fix this...again (long)

1) Remove the fry into their own grow-out tank (not there or cycled, so a no-go) OR put your tank divider into one of your other tanks (so the female can't see them in her own tank). Make sure that the fry aren't near the filter intake or outake (the current could push them around). If there are holes in your divider, you will need to find a way to cover them, without disrupting the flow of water between the sides of the tank. I would think that lady's stockings would ork if stretched over the entrie divider. This is sometimes used on filter intakes to keep fry from being sucked up.

2) Run to lfs. Buy 5 gallon tank and some Meth Blue. Use gravel from established tank, water from another tank, and old media to instantly cycle it. Remove the pot from the tank by getting a large bowl, sticking it under water, picking up the pot and putting it in the bowl. Make sure the the eggs remain submerged. You also have to make sure that the female is not in the cave; she still needs to protect her fry already in the tank. Using the same method, get the pot into the 5 gallon. The meth blue is added so that the eggs don't grow a fungus. The female usually takes care of that, but she's not here. I would turn the pot on its side in the 5 gallon so that you can see the eggs, and they should
be on the top side of the pot (they fall to the floor when they hatch and are called red wrigglers). You may be able to introduce the fry into the main tank to be raised by the mother, but she might not do it. You would have to get another grow-out tank.

3. Leave them be. The female will haev to worry about htis for 5 days tops. She'll either then take care of both batches of fry in the same "cloud" of babies or she'll ignore one of the batches.

IMO the last is the easiest (if you aren't worried about having, raising, and/or selling a million fry. I have my apistos in a community tank, and first decided to let nature take its course: if they could keep them alive, more power to them. I am considering making my tank an all-apisto tank and getting some of the babies into the community. HTH

 

[Seb R]

Thanks for all your help, gotta say this is alot harder than imagined!

So far I'm going to do option 3, but the female definatly is stressed. I'm going to sleep on what to do right now, so I'll leave anything else for the moment.

AAARRGGHH difficult decisions!

 

[Seb R]

Well heres the story. I thought I'd share this as I have learnt a heck of alot since I first decided to try to breed apistos. So I want to show my mistakes to help anyone else in the future.

Anyway when I first had the babies, about 13 of them they were great with thier mother, but I left the male in. Big mistake. The male althoguh did help gaurd the fry really well for a bit, even moving them about, his thoughts soon turned back to the female. He constantly tried to get near her, stressing her and making her job more difficult.
Little did I know that the 13 fry were only the beginning. Soon I could no longer see the fry. She had hidden them in a shell, and was moving from the shell to the cave and back constantly. Not letting the fry out of the cave.

So I decide to look in the cave. 100 eggs atleast! But its not all good news. Whenever the first batch of fry try to get out of the cave she goes beserk and puts them back. However as the 2nd set of eggs hatch she looses the parental bond with her first batch (whos numbers are falling). So now when they try to get out of the shell she does not recognize them and sees them as a threat, result, they are eaten. As she moved the wrigglers into that cave the older ones were driven out. I decided to act, I tried to save them, but the moment they broke cover they were went for. To cut it short I have 2 left .

My advice to anyone is to remove the male the moment you think you have eggs. Also more then one generation of fry will result in the others being eaten to protect thier younger siblings. Do not be afraid to take them away!

 

[nc_nutcase]

How many Females are with your Male?

I’m brand spanking new to Dwarves/Apistos (recently got 7 Cockatoos) but I thought this is the precise reason it is suggested to keep Cockatoos in harems. This way as one Female is tending to her young, the male has other Females to mate with hence leaving the new mother to her proper duties. This also decreases the rate at which the female reproduces which will most likely in turn lower her stress (we all know how it feels when we have more responsibility than we do time).

Again, these are my thoughts derived from reading and talking to experienced people, not personal experience, so if you have other experiences, please share. As I’m hoping to be dealing with the same ‘problems’ soon.

 

[pnyklr3]

Cockatoos work best when there are at least 2 females per male. The females can actually have shorter life-spans due to the stress the male puts on her. Get another female. You should be fine leaving the male in the tank under most circumstances (ie another female to take his mind off of the first). You are probably losing fry because the female just can't handle all the work. The second batch should fare better if the male doesn't "get at" the female again (highly unlikely that she would have any more eggs after just having laid 2 batches).

 

[Seb R]

yer well he's safely behind a screen for the moment, no more mating for him!

I'm definatly concidering getting another female. but would a 2ft x 1ft x 0.75-1ft be big enough for all of them?!

Oh and I heard that the females often fight over babies or eliminate the competition, is it true?!

 

[pnyklr3]

If two females have fry at the same time, the fry will actually travel between the females. The females either don't notice the "other" baby, or doesn't care; she'll raise them as her own. not sure how many gallons your tank is (I'm not able to figure it out right now), but a 20 gallon should hold a trio (1 male, 2 females).