22 replies to this topic

[mtchye]

Hi guys,

Recently we've been acquiring and spawning some dwarf cichlids from South America. These have all the personality of the larger fish at 1/10th the size.. I thought it might make a difference from all the African talk we usually have!

Here are a few pics. The cacutoides female was mated with a gold triple red male to try to reduce the incidence of deformities that we encounter in the gold cacutoides batches. Breeding the young from this spawn together should yield hopefully some great gold triple red cacutoides!




And here are a couple of shots of Apistogramma agassizi 'Red'

agassizi 'red'

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Edited by: mtchye at: 12/12/03 11:14 am

[Link 2 Hell]

Nice pics ..... nice fish
L2H

link2hell2002@yahoo.com


Despite all my rage
I'm still just a rat in a cage
Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly Wings

[mtchye]

Thanks L2H... Its always nice to be able to buy quality dwarfs that don't cark it as soon as they get home

Now if only I could find some decent borelli again!

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[saudukar]

They all suffer the same fate as Rams. They are medicated to the max from birth to adulthood (entire life stage) then they are shipped and encounter 'normal' water with its higher bacterial and fungal encounters which smack the hell out of them because they have no natural immunity. Also thier internal organs are pickled from having to filter medications long term.

Sometimes you may encounter a fish farm that has man handled them a bit and they are of harder stock. But its in the best interest of the farm to keep them alive and medicated.

This is no slander fro shops as I know they have alot of livestock losses from Rams/Apistos when they are shipped here. Hell alot of wholesalers simply wont stock them because of this reason.

Nature commits no errors; right and wrong are human categories. | Perth Joondalup, WA | saudukar.owns.it

[oo fish styx oo]

*sigh* Rams

After all this time, someone is telling me that the fact I could never keep a Ram alive for longer than about a month may not be my fault? The guys at my lfs used to tell me that whenever I came into their shop the Rams all hid under a rock and shook nervously.....

One day I might try again.

[Ash]

Nice fish Vince.

I was thinking of breeding cacutoides a while ago but lost interest when my gold male got stuck under a fallen rock

might give them a shot some day, are they a nice fish to breed? whats the parental care like?? the fry night have to live with the parents right now due to lack of tank space.

[mtchye]

We bred the cacuotoides in a little bare bottom tank, less than 10 gallons i think it is.. They seem to be fairly easy to breed and the female is a good parent. The male had to be removed though as the female was beating up on him, this is apparently normal with apistos.

The fry are easy to raise on microworms and frozen bbs and seem to grow fast. Be careful if you are buying golds, the vast majority of them have deformities of one kind or another!

The agassizis are supposed to be just as easy to spawn, and the ones at your shop now where i got mine are quite nice... they might be worth a try also..

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[Ash]

yeh i might have to give agassizis or caca..'s a @#%$ then, ive got a spare 10gal right now, just take the male back when they spawm, i dont think itll like being in my tang water

[mtchye]

Hi Ash,

In fact I believe cacatuioides actually come from waters with a relatively high pH, and a reasonable amount of hardness. It will probably do OK in the waters of your tang tank if those parameters aren't extreme, but I dont think it will like being with all those aggressive tanganyikans!

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[Ash]

well my tang tank is partitioned, a breeding section and a fry raising section (which is empty right now and should be for a while). The pH is usually around 8-8.5 and the kH is 12ish. is that too extreme for them? if so ill just have to remove the parents after theyve bred and raise the fry in that tank.

[mtchye]

I am not sure if it is too high. The cacs are supposed to be very adaptable. You might try the apistogramma.com forums and ask there. However the fry would be best kept in the tank they were spawned in, removing the parents instead - which is what I have done.

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[petroby]

G'day, well yes some cacatoides do come from more alkaline waters but no where near the alkalinity or hardness of rift Lakes water.
You will probably lose the fish, but even if they survive the water chemistry the eggs will not hatch as the high calcium in the water makes the eggs harder and fry can't break free.
Great pics too, I got to learn how to use my digital camera

Cichlid POWER,
Peter R

[petroby]

G'day again , as to breeding Apistogramma, they are great fun and well worth the extra effort required to keep them.
The main requirement is for the maintenance of clean water, they are susceptible to any build up of pollutants also applies to the Rams.

If you want to breed them successfully set up a small tank, I use 18"x12"x12" or 24"x12"x12" tanks but I have bred them in 18"x9"x9"as well. I use plenty of plants, an undergravel filter or a sponge filter, but I find a few dither fish, neon tetras, are condusive to encouraging them to settle down and feel safe.

These dither fish also give the male something to occupy himself with after the pair spawn, otherwise he wants to help raise the fry and the female will attack him and even kill him if he comes too close to her fry.

I give the fish a half flower pot, a rock with a small cave in it or I now use those imitation wood decorations with the silk plants attached, I have found the females love them the most and will usually set up home in there even if a flower pot is in the tank. Another good cave can be made from a half coconut shell with a small opening cut in it.

I also find live food stimulates the fish more than dry foods, my dwarfs are never keen on eating dry foods.

Hope this helps anyone thinking of trying these great little fish.

Cichlid POWER,
Peter R

[Ash]

There is no problem with the water in the spawning tank, its a 24x10x12 with a small peice of glass in the corner acting as sort of a fully submerged trickle. that water can be anything i want it to, but its my other tanks that i cant change the water parametres, and this is where the pH and kH are high, and where i would have to raise the young if i was to let the parents stay in the 24". would the fry grow to slowly if i raised them in that size tank?

[petroby]

G'day Ash, why remove the fry? I find they grow much quicker when left with the parents for as long as you can, that is until the pair look as if they are going to spawn again.
I think once they are old enough you may be able to convert the young over to the alkaline harder water as long as you acclimatise them slowly.

Cichlid POWER,
Peter R

[mtchye]

Update: 3 months on and the first of the fry have grown up and spawned. Here are some pics of a few of the males... Hopefully some nice interesting normals and golds will come out of this next generation

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[Brett4Perth]

Nice fish Vince,

I might be interested in some of these.
Let me know when you are looking to move some on.

Brett

[me]

i might be interested too.......hrm me thinks

[wysiwyg]

Great photos and good quality fry from nice breeding stock. Well done. After years of retail, it is lovely to see nice apistos. It used to be heart breaking losing them. It's true that they are medicated to the max and suffer when they hit "our" water. BTW I had no idea that they were from higher pH and hardness water - thanks for the info.

wys

[mtchye]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the kind words. I will see what I have left for sale after I have spread some around to some keen breeders. I would really like to see a few different spawns from these guys and pick the best ones again from the next generation. As I have lost the parents we only have one go at it unless we do another cross - and i haven't yet encountered another good looking gold cac.. (hehe there seems to be 1 good male in each shipment)

On closer inspection I seem to see more females than males - good when breeding as cacs can be bred harem style even in quite small tanks if you provide enough territories... However it could also be subdominant males who have not coloured up in the presence of a dominant male. I have been removing dominant males to a bigger tank and each time one other fish seems to 'male' up and take its place lol..

Anyway at the request of a member i'll try to post as much detail here on spawning and raising these guys as possible.

Spawning tank: 40*37*20cm high (~30 litres)

Spawning substrate: The same type of ceramic shell as the peppermints spawned in - can you tell I like these things??

Tank contents: a large bunch of java moss

Filtration: air powered dual sponge filter

Water parameters: Did not measure at the time - but probably the same as the peppermint tank - very very soft, pH about neutral, temp ~ 26-27 degrees celcius..


The parents spent a few weeks in this same tank in quarantine, where they were treated for gill flukes and camallanus - this seemed to make them much happier and their respiratory rate seemed to slow down. We also saw a lot more weight gain as a result. Gill flukes seem to be very common in small numbers on many fish so now no fish go into our 4x2x2 without going through the quarantine process.

Then they spent a few weeks in a 4x2x2 planted tank - where they paired up and spawned once. Once this occured we took the parents out and placed them back into the little tank with a cave.

In the spawning tank what we did was have a constant supply of live blackworm available to them. This was their only food for two weeks or so (one standard bag lasts at least that long for a little pair of cacs) and they would not eat anything else as long as the worms were in there! (be careful though to check that the worms can survive in your tank - you need good oxygen levels or they can die off and pollute the water very quickly)

This constant supply of food quickly conditioned the pair and they soon spawned. At this point the female started becoming very aggressive to the much larger male, resulting in him becoming a bit tattered and bashed. He was in the tank with her probably a couple of days after spawning and he wasn't looking good. Actually I didn't notice that they had spawned until i saw the male up in the corner of the tank. He was moved back into the 4x2x2 but died soon after.

In any case the fry were swimming at at around ~5-7 days after spawning. (When the first pic of the female and fry above were taken) These were started initially on microworm and frozen baby brine shrimp.. (too lazy to hatch anything!)

After about a week on this a friend of mine sent me some artemia replacement fry food that was supposed to be excellent in terms of attracting the fry to eat as well as nutritional content. Boy was he right about that! They went for it like crazy and soon it was just about the only stuff they got... They grew fast on this food and soon i began moving the largest individuals - usually male - to the 4x2x2...

These guys started developing colour at around 5-10mm size! I think the high amount of carotenoids and vitamins in the artemia replacement really helped in terms of their growth rate - as well as weekly 50-80% water changes with Prime treated tap water.

Anyway back to the present and 3 months later we have the individuals you see in the photos above. No deformities seen yet and few fatalities - I estimate the brood size to be around 35-50 individuals at the start - with about 30 - 40 grown out. This was from a pretty small female so not a bad result. They have all just started spawning (in the same shells) in the 4x2x2 and as soon as i free up some space I will get workin on F2...

Anyway I think thats it! A step by step on how we spawned our cacs... Happy with that Seb? Any more questions just ask..

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