Here’s another video from my fish room, featuring my F1 Peruvian Angelfish and Apistogramma sp. ‘Breitbinden’.

My 50G aquarium is now an overgrown jungle of Blyxa japonica and Blyxa aubertii. There’s a little bit of Ludwigia arcuata and Limnophila sp. ‘Vietnam’ mixed in there as well with Narrow-leaf Java Fern carving out a place too.

On one hand, I’m really happy with the tremendous growth, as most of the tank is algae free minus the Eheim spraybar and a few older leaves. Also, the bristlenosed plecos that I have in here are continuing to churn out more fry than I know what to do with. The Apistogramma have a pretty good idea of what to do with them, however, but I still seem to have all females, and no breeding there.

On the other hand, the huge mass of plant growth has completely consumed the aquascape. Below you can see what the aquarium looked like shortly after planting. All of that same driftwood is still in the tank, but you wouldn’t know it, would you?

So, now I need to decide whether to simply hack back the plant growth to a more reasonable state or to rescape it altogether. I imagine that this will largely depend on how many plants I pickup at the GWAPA meeting next weekend!

On Saturday I attended the Capital Cichlid Association’s September meeting, featuring Chuck Rambo, who spoke about dwarf cichlids. I’ve always been fascinated with cichlids, but due to my even larger obsession with planted aquariums, I’ve been limited to keeping smaller dwarf cichlids, with a few exceptions like Angelfish. Nevertheless, I had marked Chuck’s presentation on my calendar all summer long, hoping to learn about a few more species out there; he didn’t disappoint!

Chuck began his presentation by showing a few African shellies before going through the Pelvicachromis genus, since many hobbyists keep Kribs as their first dwarf cichlid. Interestingly enough, the fish that intrigued me the most was the non-dwarf, Pelvicachromis sacrimontis. These fish sometimes get mixed in with regular Krib shipments, but as they grow, they turn into 6″+ beasts. The way to differentiate them from their smaller cousins is that P. sacrimonits always have blue patches on their cheeks.

One of the other striking fish he showed from the same genus was Pelvicachromis humilis, but unfortunately these are extremely aggressive fish who need a minimum of 40G per pair to keep peacefully.

Next, Chuck began walking through several fish in the Nanochromis genus, including Nanochromis dimidiatus shown above. One of the tricks to keeping Nanachromis is that they are actually algae eaters, who scrape algae from rock surfaces like Mbuna do. Therefore, a varied diet high in spirulina or similar algae tablets are recommended.

There was a lot of time spent discussing various types of Rams, but the next group of fish that really interested me as a planted tank guy were the checkerboard cichlids, or Dicrossus. Chuck mentioned that Dicrossus maculatus are newly available in the hobby, and actually easier to keep than the more familiar Dicrossus filamentosus. Both species prefer soft acid water, and often spawn on leaves. It’s important to consider your aquarium temperature when spawning these fish, as temperatures above 80 degrees tend to produce more males, while lower temperatures yield more females.

Dwarf pikes became the next topic of discussion, where Chuck quickly pointed out that few pikes are actually dwarf varieties, as they will grow quite large if given the proper conditions. One exception to this are the Teleocichla species, who do stay quite small. Unfortunately, they are also one of the least colorful varieties of pikes you can find.

An old stand-by cichlid for planted aquariums are the keyhole cichlids, or Cleithracara maronii. These are peaceful, elegant, cichlids who are easy to spawn when in soft water. They get their name from the distinctive keyhole pattern on their bodies, but due to significant line-breeding, this pattern may not be as distinctive in some strains as in the wild-caught fish.

One of the next dwarf cichlids I would like to get my hands on are Laetacara dorsigera, who are small shy, but brightly colored dwarf cichlids from South America. I think they could be fantastic little fish for my 33G rimless aquarium.

Chuck only recommended a single species of jewel cichlids, Hemichromis cristatus, as they are a bit easier to keep and slightly more tolerant than some of the other species in the genus. I really enjoyed keeping the jewels I collected in Florida previously, but you definitely only want to keep a them alone in a tank to avoid dead fish.

Finally, the presentation concluded with a long section on Apistogramma, one of the most widely known and diverse group of dwarf cichlids. Incredibly, scientists now believe that this genus may consist of over 500 species in the wild. Chuck relayed a fascinating study by Uwe Romer who discovered that Apistogramma may be partly dispersed from one area to another by feeding Kingfish birds. Uwe left a pool outside in South America under a Kingfisher nest, and monitored what fish ended up in the pool. Apparently, Kingfisher young will refuse to eat dead fish, so if the parents bring back a deceased meal, the young will spit them out. Romer hypothesized that some Apistogramma may actually play dead in order to avoid becoming a meal. In his experiment, he actually found quite a number of live Apistogramma in his pool from the birds. Incredible!

I really enjoyed Chuck’s presentation on dwarf cichlids, learning quite a few things. This writeup is really just a small subset of what he covered, so I highly recommend inviting him out to your club to do a similar presentation. He’s actually part of the ACA’s speaker program, which can help subsidize part of the cost of flying their speakers to your club meeting. Take advantage of it! Comments welcome!

Note: All photos, except for the last one, in this post were taken during Chuck’s presentation. Photo credit belongs to the original photographers.

I made a few adjustments to my 33G aquascape since the last post. For starters, I still haven’t removed the Myriophyllum mattogrossense from the right side, as my other tanks are currently full of other plants that I don’t want to get overrun by the fast-growing Myrio. I really think you could see this stuff grow if you sat and watched it! I’ve had differing opinions from folks as to whether or not they like the Myrio. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Otherwise, I did remove the rock that was in the front-right, directly in front of the large rock. I felt that the previous one was too big and detracted from the large rock. What do you think of the smaller rock there? I also raised one of the rocks in the back, just left of center, so that it would be slightly more visible, rather than being buried by the Blyxa japonica.

One of the reasons I love this porous mossy rock is that many pieces have small caves in them. The large rock, for example, has two caves, one directly on its peak, with the other on the backside of the rock. In previous scapes, I’ve had both Apistogramma and Ancistrus spawn inside of these tunnels.

I’m really amazed by how quickly this aquascape is shaping up, and filling in. I guess fresh aquasoil, combined with good lights and lots of CO2 are a winning combination. The only problem I’ve had so far is some diatom algae, which was easily gobbled up overnight (literally) by four baby bristlenosed plecos I added from another tank. While they grow to about 6″ in size, right now these plecos are about 1.5″ inches, or similar in size to Otocinclus, so they were the perfect remedy. Comments/critiques welcome!

Since there’s multiple feet of snow outside, I’ve been sitting inside trying to come up with creative things to occupy my time. Today, I pulled out our old video camera and headed into the fishroom. I lucked upon some interesting activity going on in my 50G with the colony of Apistogramma baenschi ‘Inka 50’ . First, I have a video of a female in full bright yellow coloration guarding a little patch of territory she’s carved out underneath some Blyxa japonica stems.

Next, I caught two males displaying to each other, with the largest, most dominate one eventually chasing the other away. This happens all of the time, and doesn’t usually end up with anyone getting injured. It’s interesting to me how in both of these videos, the Apistogramma only cares about other cichlids. They never chase away the other tetras. (This would change if they were actually protecting fry.)

Finally, after the male-to-male domination display earlier, his female approaches him doing a kind of odd-looking dance to indicate that she’s not a threat. Recognizing this, he lets her go into their patch of Blyxa that he’s protecting.

The behaviors of these cichlids provide unending fascination to me as I enjoy my aquariums during a  cold wintry day. Comments welcome!

The holiday season has been really busy for me this year, so I haven’t been able to post near as much as I’d normally like to. Nevertheless, I did want to update everyone on the one aquascape that seems to be progressing along pretty well — my 50G Blyxa scape. I haven’t posted about this tank in almost three months, so if you were to look back at the last picture, just after rescaping, you’ll see that the Blyxa japonica has really taken over the scene, maybe too much so.

50G - 12/09/2009 (Click for larger image)

New additions to this aquarium include a colony of Apistogramma baenschi ‘Inka 50’, who I am hoping will breed. Speaking of breeding, the group of bristlenosed plecos have burrowed out a hole under the rock on the left side of the tank where there’s no hairgrass, and have already spawned once. The little black specks on the right wall of the aquarium are the baby plecos hanging out. They’ve survived for over a month now, so I’m hopeful that they’ll continue to grow to adulthood. Besides taming the monstrous Blyxa japonica, please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement!

Last weekend, while I was trying to get pictures of the Apistogramma baenschi “Inka” in my 20L, I also snapped a few shots of the Nerite snails and Amano shrimp while waiting for the Apistos to come out of hiding. I wanted to share a few of those shots.

Olive Nerite Snails are by far one of the best algae eaters you can add to your aquarium, but many of them are quite pretty as well. I love the spiraling parallel lines patterned over many of their shells. I thought this guy (above) looks pretty good against the orange tones of the rock.

One of their key attributes is their willingness to slither along the glass, cleaning it of green spot, or other tough algae. You can see that this particular snail’s shell is slowly eroding away due to the lower pH and hardness of my water. This is fairly common in planted aquariums, especially when CO2 is injected as the carbonic acid is hard on their shells. I’ve known some hobbyists who used reef epoxy to fill in these holes, prolonging the life of their invert inhabitants.

Amano shrimp are the other must have invert in nearly every aquarium. They can clear a field of hair algae in a matter of days, if added in proper proportion to the size of the tank. (That, by the way, is probably roughly 1 shrimp/2 gallons.) Too many, with too little algae, and they will start eating your moss fronds, or other delicate leaved plants. To minimize that, I feed mine algae wafers. The largest Amano in the tank usually swims right to the wafer, and holds it captive until he’s eaten his fill. Then the rest of the invertibrates in the tank swarm the leftovers. A day of the life of an invert.

A couple months ago I ordered a pair of Apistogramma baenschi “Inka” off of Aquabid. This is one type of Apistogramma that I’ve wanted to keep for a long time, after seeing pictures of it online. I love the mohawk that the males have, as well as, their very pretty coloration.

Just like Apistogramma panduro, they have a red ring on their tail fin, with a caudal spot on their body just before their tail fin. This particular fish is still a juevenille, but even so, you can see the brilliant irridescent coloration on his dorsal and pectoral fins. Blue, yellow, orange, and red are all represented on the same fish — who said freshwater fish aren’t colorful?

I have a much larger male Apistogramma baenschi “Inka” in another tank without a mate, but I didn’t want to put these significantly smaller fish in with him. That male, however, has a mohawk that is much more feathery and while it can stand straight up, he often lets it ripple to the side in the current. It’s very unique looking, and if the guy ever sticks around for a picture, I’ll post it.

For now, these fish are in my newly rescaped 20L, and pretty much have free reign of the aquarium. I have another pair of Botia sidthimunki loaches in there as well, but will try and fish them out when I can so that they don’t poach on any Apistogramma fry. So far, these fish seem rather straight-forward to keep, so hopefully they’ll breed for me. If anyone has any tips/experiences specific to this species, I’d love to hear them!

On Saturday, I attended the Capital Cichlid Association’s meeting where they brought Eric Bodrock down from Pittsburgh to talk about breeding Corydoras. Eric is quite experienced in this regard as the owner of All Oddball Aquatics, where he breeds and sell many rare or hard-to-find fish, including Corydoras.

I’m going to provide a short summary of his talk, as I remember it from my notes. For starters, there are hundreds of Corydora species in the wild, all from South America. Just like with the L-numbers used to denote undescribed species of plecos, there are now C-numbers, and then CW-numbers which are being used to describe the multitude of new Corydoras species that are being discovered. Once you find a source for the species that you want to breed, you need to make sure you get healthy fish. Make sure their barbels are long, their eyes clear, and free of deformities in their body or fins. Cories are social animals, so buy in groups of 6-10, and try to break them down from there to 2 males/female, or pairs.

Now you need a tank to use as a breeding tank. They don’t need large tanks, so 10G and 20G tanks work great. Use a sponge filter, and provide plenty of spawning mediums, such as Anubias or Java Fern, yarn spawning mops, piles of rocks, etc. Also, ensure that there’s plenty of circulation in the tank, as many species prefer to spawn in the current.

Once in your tank, you need to prepare the fish for breeding. Feed them a variety of high-quality foods, such as tubiflex worms, earthworm sticks, daphnia, blackworms, etc. Blackworms in particular do a good job at conditioning the fish to breed. Sexing Corydoras is relatively easy. Females are much larger than males, broader across, and often their pectoral fins are rounded. Males are more slender, often have pointed pectoral fins, and also are often the more attractive fish.

When eggs are laid, you must either remove the parents, or remove the eggs, as the fish will eat their own eggs. It’s often preferable to use a mesh container, floating the eggs inside of that, with the whole box in the parent’s aquarium so that the water chemistry is consistent. In addition, alder cones are useful tools to prevent fungus from infecting unfertilized eggs. Once the eggs hatch, and you have free swimming fry, squeeze a dirty sponge filter into the tank to provide microscopic organisms for the fry to feed on. As they grow, switch to baby-brine-shrimp, and other live foods to rear them.

Eric gave a great talk, and really provided much more information than I can possibly provide here. I’d definitely trust him as a source for healthy fish on Aquabid. He brought a number of fish to the auction. I ended up with Apistogramma alacrina, which I’m looking forward to breed. Another great meeting, thanks CCA!

I’m going to share an embarrassing story about something that I neglected to do, and am continuing to pay the price for. A couple weekends ago, I was at my favorite local fish store, and decided to pickup a dozen Neon Rainbowfish, M. praecox, to add to 7 others I had, in order to form a nice school in my 75G aquarium. The store has a good reputation for properly quarantining their fish for sale, and they all looked extremely healthy and vibrant. So, against my good judgement, I decided to acclimate them directly into my 75G.

Well, the next day, I noticed that 2-3 of the fish were off by themselves, some of them having discolored patches on their bodies. The next day, those fish were dead, and over the next 4-5 days, all 12 of the others continued to follow suit. I contacted the store owner, and he had received similar reports from the other customers who bought the fish, and agreed to fully replace them once he got a healthy batch in. That’s fine, and had I quarantined them, that would be the end of a very sad incident.

Instead, I’ve lost one of my other M. praecox in the 75G, all five of my beloved Red Lizard Catfish, and my newly bought and favored Apistogramma hongsloi sp. ‘Super Rostrich.’ The corydoras, L729 plecos, and Nannochromis nudiceps so far seem to be unaffected, but I’m not considering myself out of the water yet. In addition, I’ve also incurred the extra expense of having to medicate the entire 75G tank, instead of just a 10G quarantine tank.

So, please, learn from my mistake, and quarantine your fish. Even if you just keep an empty 10G aquarium lying around, you can fill it with water from your main tank, throw in a sponge filter (preferably a used one), and be setup for 2 weeks prior to introducing the fish to your main aquarium. I usually follow this advice, and wish I did in this instance, as well.