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[anchar]

Keeping Dwarf Cichlids
by Stephanie Nicholls

Original added December 2000

Having very little space at home for tanks I attempted to find a way to keep several species of South American dwarfs but still have a reasonable chance of breeding them.

I ventured into the idea of a Dwarf Community tank, the basic concept behind this tank was to house several varieties of dwarf cichlids, and the intention was that a pair could be pulled out for 'special treatment' in my breeding tank if I particularly wanted that pair to breed. I had an additional 30+ gallon tank for growing out fry. The plan was to select SA Dwarfs that would not interbreed and be readily identifiable even at a small age.

The Dwarf community tank was a 4ft tank of about 50 gallons capacity, I had a river sand substrate and it was well planted, mostly with lace fern, which grew rapidly along with some cryptocorynes, an Amazon sword and a little bits of wisteria and val. The tank was filtered by a Rio internal power filter attached to a fluidised bed filter and with a small home made spray bar water return. The tank was in our lounge room, which made it a display tank as well.

A number of species came and went through the community tank before I had any real luck with the concept. Two of the species that I had no luck with were Apistogramma panduro and A. iniridae. The A. panduro spawned in the tank less than 10cm from the spawning site of a female Nannacara aureocephalus and I removed the pair for the safety of all. The pair did not take well to the change of tank and sickened and died within a few weeks. The A. iniridae spawned in the community tank and promptly after spawning the male died and left me with a partnerless female, the female also ate her eggs after 36 hours.

By October 2000, I had the following occupants in a 4ft planted tank.

South American Dwarfs:

* A. agassizi pair + subdominant female
* A. gibbiceps pair
* A. iniridae - lone female
* N. aureocephalus female
* N. anomala male

Assorted Others - as the tank was in the lounge room I didn’t always get complete say over what went in, the following fish were inhabitants but I would not have chosen them myself.

* 2 large silver angels
* Kuhli Loach
* 3 Zebra Danio’s

In addition to this I found the two Nannacara species were interbreeding. The N. anomala male was not deliberately purchased to be part of the display tank and was only left in the tank as he was extremely difficult to catch. No fry from this pairing survived to maturity or were removed.

October 2000 “Spring Spawning Frenzy”

Starting in October this year I experienced a period of intense breeding by a number of the pairs of fish in the tank. I measured the water conditions shortly after finding the first free-swimming spawn and they were: pH 5.0 temp 26.5C, general hardness 60ppm. Spawning occurred very shortly after a longish period of no water changes, approximately 5 weeks, followed by two water changes in under a week.

The A. gibbiceps were the first to spawn successfully. The female had been hiding out at the back of the tank and turning yellow on and off for months and I had ceased to expect any fry. One evening I noticed the male quite ferociously chasing off an angel and decided to investigate the unusual behaviour. A short search and I found the female quite high up in the plants with what I thought were a few free swimming fry around her. I watched her for a while and she led the fry about the tank and down to the substrate level. It was then I saw it was more like 50 - 60 fry than “a few”!

The pair diligently guarded the fry. The female moved them around the tank a lot and the male guarded a territory of about 2 1/2 feet, over half the tank.

The next week the A. agassizi spawned. This pair had been in a breeding tank, on their own and after 10+ spawns I had decided the female was a hopeless mother and would eat her fry for the rest of her life. She surprised me by being a model mother this time and looked after her babies with great care. Luckily she had spawned at the other end of the tank, so the territorial clash between the two pairs was minimal. The two males did fight and after watching them in a lip locking battle I hastily rearranged the tank, building a small wall of stones, about 6 – 8 inches high in a semicircle about 8 inches from the A. agassizi spawning site.

There are three significant differences I can note about the A. agassizi spawns between the breeding tank and the community tank.

The number of other fish in the tank was much higher, whether they represented competition or comfort I dont know.
The pH was significantly lower, spawnings in the breeding tank took place at pH 6.5, whilst in the community tank it was pH 5.
The number of eggs/fry per spawn was significantly higher in the community tank. When spawning in the breeding tank the number of eggs were low, < 20 each time, and the two spawns artificially raised numbered 6 and 14 hatched fry respectively. Of the two spawns produced in the community tank, the first was not counted, but was approximately 25 fry, the second was counted as the fry were siphoned off and numbered well over 50.

Most interesting was the difference in behaviour between the two pairs. The A. gibbiceps claimed a relatively large territory of approximately 14″ x 2.5′ and the male was made to keep his distance from the female and fry. The female moved the fry all over this area. By comparison the A. agassizi had a much smaller territory which seemed to encompass a space about 8″ radially from the spawning site tucked into the front corner of the tank. The female tolerated the male in close proximity to the fry and the fry were not moved around the tank in search of food as much. How much the small barrier wall influenced this behaviour I do not know. I saw no evidence of harem tendencies in the A. agassizi. The male would tolerate the subdominant female, however the female A. agassizi would not allow her near of the spawning site.

Between the two males the rest of the fish were kept in a very tight area occupying less than a quarter of the tank, and shaped like an inverted pyramid with the wider area at the surface of the tank and almost no floor space. This created a number of problems for me, in particular feeding. My normal feeding pattern was Tetra Bits in the morning and frozen bloodworm in the evening, with any excess that floated to the bottom being eaten by the ever-greedy angels. However the males denied them access to any floor space even to eat. So I ended up having a large amount of uneaten food starting to go rotten where it had settled in “someone’s” territory.

Additionally cleaning the tank was made extremely difficult as the fry tended to congregate in the areas where there was a large amount of debris, so siphoning off debris became an exercise of extreme caution.

Raising the Fry

Obviously with so many inhabitants in the tank, the fry became instant fish food. Both pairs did excellent jobs looking after their fry and usually retained a high number for the first two weeks free swimming. After that I noticed that all the fry would be gone and the female would return to her normal colouration. This did not seem to disturb them and they would readily spawn again. In a seven-week period I had 3 A. gibbiceps spawns, 2 A. agassizi spawns and 2 N. aureocephalus x N. anomala spawns.

From subsequent spawns I siphoned off some of the Apistogramma fry and attempted to raise them in floating “fry containers”. These were ice cream containers with fly screen windows in two sides. The fry were so small I had to cover the windows with nylon stocking material as the fry, at 7 days free swimming, could easily fit through the fly screen. I have come to the conclusion that this is a very unsatisfactory way to raise dwarf fry. I had a very high mortality rate in the ice cream containers, which were filled with java moss, and a slower growth rate compared to fry of the same spawn left with the female.

I also encountered algae problems in the tank, as the floating containers reduced the surface water movement and encouraged a film of blue green algae to grow on the water surface of up to half of the tank.

Conclusion

As an exercise in restricted tank space it was moderately successful, however if I were to repeat it in the future I would make the following changes.

1. Restrict the occupants to 3 breeding pairs and have one or two other subdominant females as target/dither fish.

2. Have small separate fry rearing tanks that the fry can be removed to, with water from the parent tank probably at the seven-day free-swimming stage.

3. Have more distinct dwarf species, as the A. gibbiceps and A. agassizi fry are very similar even at two months, which does not allow them to be reared in the same tank.