RIP apistogramma viejit

As posted a couple days ago, I rescaped my 20G high tank with some fresh Amazonia aquasoil and manzanita wood. I’ve rescaped a number of tanks in the past with aquasoil, and I’ll usually add the soil, plant and scape the tank, fill with water, allow to cycle for a few hours, and then add in the fish. Most times, the filters are preexisting, or some of the plants/hardscape come from other tanks, so the biological filter should be largely pre-established. I’ve never had any problems with fish loss using this method.

Now I’ve read and heard about other folks experiences about how new aquasoil temporarily causes the pH to crash. Since my methods above have always worked, I’ve never paid them much heed. True, the pH does drop, but never to an extreme degree that the fish couldn’t adjust to. So, with this 20G setup, I followed my same methodologies. I removed the apistogramma viejitas that were in there, placed them in a bucket with airstone, and proceeded with the change. A few hours after setup, I moved the apistogramma back into the tank. I was actually hoping that the pH would drop down a fair amount and induce spawning since I haven’t been able to get them to breed at a 6.5 CO2 induced pH. They seemed happy enough that night. Morning came, and they were still swimming around, not looking distressed. Then, I get home from work, and one is on the floor, and the other is upside-down in the tank. What changed?

Well, I’m not sure. This is the first tank I’ve setup with fresh wood in a long time. Is it possible that the tannins from the new manzanita dropped the pH further in conjunction with the aquasoil-induced drop? I don’t know. In any case, I think I’ll let my fish spend an extra day or two in an aerated/filtered bucket next time I redo a tank with aquasoil. Rest in peace apistogramma viejita.

Milling around before the meeting

The Capital Cichlid Association’s April 2007 meeting featured a well-known dwarf cichlid expert, Ted Judy, from Colorado to speak about west African dwarf cichlids of the Pelvicachromis genus.

Pat shows off the new poster.

Before the meeting started, everyone was milling around, engaging in typical fish talk, and admiring the upcoming auction goods. Pat Kelly, CCA‘s president, opened the meeting by showing off a new club poster that is going to be spread around to the local stores to help advertise the clubs’ existence.

Then, Pat introduced Ted Judy, who had prepared an excellent presentation about the Pelvicachromis genus of west African cichlids. Ted opened his presentation with a brief overview of the cichlid family. Pelvicachromis is a very popular group of cichlids that have

Ted Judy

been in the hobby for a long time. The Pelvicachromis pulcher was first kept and bred in the 1960s, and gained widespread affection since it is a colorful fish, that is peaceful enough to be kept in a community setting. In general, Pelvicachromis can be easily sexed by looking at the ventral fin. A male will have a pointed ventral fin, with iridescent blue markings, while a female’s fins will be more rounded. All Pelvicachromis species are coastal fish, found only in freshwater streams/rivers within 100 miles of the ocean. Their habitat does not consist of much vegetation, so the substrate is quite silty/muddy. Therefore, the Pelvicachromis often sift the sand, feeding on decaying matter and invertebrates found in the sand. The pH of these streams is usually close to neutral, 7.0.

Based on Ted’s observations in the wild, he has come up with his own unique formula for feeding his Pelvicachromis. Since their diet consists of 70-80% vegetable matter, he tries to replicate this by mixing vegetable and spirulina flakes, with a small portion of protein-based flakes, such as “cichlid flakes” into one container. He then feeds his fish this combined flake mix, ground into small pieces so that it can be easily eaten. To rear fry, or prepare fish for spawning, he will mix in some brine shrimp, daphia, or grindle/white worms. He will also feed krill to bring out more color in a fish.

When seeking breeding pairs, Ted recommends buying a group of 6 fish, and putting them into a smallish 20G tank. Within a month, if a pair has formed, Ted removes all but the weakest other fish. He has found that by leaving one extra Krib in the tank, the pair has a target to “beat” on, which helps to strength the pair’s bond. Setting up the Krib’s breeding space is relatively straight forward; just add a few hollowed-out coconuts, with just enough space for the male to enter. He notes that pH affects the ratio of male and female fry produced. More acidic water produces more females, while alkaline water tends to create more males. Once the fry are free swimming, raise them on powdered flake food and brine shrimp, and make sure to do lots of water changes. Ted does a 20% water change everyday when first raising fry.

Ted then proceeded to discuss many different species and color morphs of Pelvicachromis, providing pictures of each. He did an excellent job giving geographic collection information for each species, as well as, the probability of finding each species domestically depending on political or logistical complications. Each species was accompanied by a slew of information that I recommend you research further on web:

Ted Judy’s profile on Cichlid Room
apistogramma.com

GWAPA’s March 2007 meeting was another great meeting, this one at Sean Murphy’s home. For a guy known for his Cryptocoryne expertise, he sure can put together an amazing aquascape. This nano-tank to the left, sits innocently on his kitchen counter, with only a desk lamp over top. The desk-lamp sports only a daylight compact-fluorescent spiral bulb. I didn’t measure it, but I believe it’s just an 8″ cube, but he’s made it look much bigger here. Nice work Sean! This tank aside, the rest of Sean’s tanks are all “crypt farms.”

The topic for this meeting was “Growing Aquatic Plants Emerged.” A meeting summary can be found on the GWAPA website.

I was excited about this meeting because I had lined up a trade with Rob to swap my Apistogramma panduros for a half dozen of his Apistogramma sp. ‘Rotpunkt.’ So far they’re settling into my 40G nicely, but are still too young to sex. I hope to post some pictures of them up here soon.

Besides this fish swap, there was a huge auction this month with just about any plant you can think of being auctioned — everything from java moss to sunset hygrophilia to any of the more exotic cultivars you can think of. I only came away with two items, but I’m excited about getting them going. My auction wins are Ludwigia sp. ‘Guinea’ and Bacopa sp. ‘Araguaia.’ I kept Ludwigia sp. ‘Guinea’ previously, but I think it got overgrown by Rotala macrandra var. ‘Green,’ and subsequently melted away. I haven’t kept many Bacopa’s because there’s something about their vertical stance that is unappealing to me, but I’m going to give this one a try nevertheless. Even if I don’t like the look, who can deny the minty smell of its leaves?

I wanted to provide a better picture of the rescaped 40G tank that I redid this past weekend. The specs are below…

Equipment:

Filter: Eheim 2213

CO2: Pressurized, approx. 2-3 bubbles/sec

Substrate: ADA Powersand, Amazonia Aquasoil, with Tourlamine BC additives.

Dosing: None currently, will start dosing SeaChem’s line as needed.

Hardscape: California Pourous Mossy Rock.

Flora:

Front: Utricularia graminfolia, HC, baby tears, Ranalisma rostrata (I’ll decide later which of these to make permanent)

Back: Limnophilia aromatica, Rotala macrandra var. ‘green’, Blyxa japonica, Pogostemon stellatus, Blyxa aubertii

Fauna:

Melanotaenia praecox, Apistogramma panduro, Rummy-nose tetras, Olive Nerite Snails

I haven’t blogged in a little while due to an unexpected trip out of the state due to a family emergency. When these things happen, they don’t always fall conveniently right after a water change, or when your CO2 tank is 100% full. As happens, the timing for my 20G high was quite unfortunate. I had kind of let this tank go a little bit anyways because it seems that some kind of algae spore is embedded in the bogwood, and won’t go away. I didn’t want to pull out the wood because it makes a great shelter for the Apistogramma viejita in this aquarium. So, with an algae outbreak already creeping up, no water change for 2 weeks, and my CO2 tank running out, I came home to this mess.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do here. I think I may just tear the whole thing down and start it fresh. I could make this a non-planted tank, specifically for the purpose of breeding apistos, using Rain/RO water and peat to lower the PH down to ridiculous levels. Or, I might rescape the whole thing, without this bogwood, once my ADA order of Amazonia comes in.

Eitherway, I guess this shows that while there are a lot of low-maintenance planted tanks, some of these higher light, nutrient dependant, CO2 sucking tanks can really go south in a short time if not tended to. This isn’t a terrible thing because I love the constant change of this hobby, but it’s a good headcheck that there’s more at work in these little biocubes than might meet the eye.

A year or two ago, GWAPA placed a group order for a number of apistogramma. In that order, I got about 6 apistogramma borellii fish. I successfully bred these guys in a 20G high and had at couple generations going. Then, unfortunately, while I was in California at the AGA, my CO2 tank

Apistogramma borellii female with babies (lower right)

dumped the remainder of the canister into this aquarium, and killed off all of my adult fish. All of the smaller fish in the tank survived, including 5-6 borellii babies, which at the time were not sexable. I decided to dedicate a 20G long tank to try and get a new population going. After a couple months of blackworm feeding to get the fish in good breeding shape, I finally noticed the drab juevenilles coloring up — bright yellows and blues! I noticed that a pair formed, which kept 2-3 other males to the outer parts of the tank. Then, this weekend I finally see the female hovering around with a handful of babies. To get an idea of perspective, this female fish is probably only 1.5 inches long. The babies are mere millimeters. Those large looking foreground plants are marselia quadrafolia! It seems that the female has taken to guarding the fry. I haven’t seen the male near them yet.

Here is an updated picture of my 20 long tank in my office. Last week I noticed that one of the female apistogramma borellii had turned bright yellow. I haven’t seen any fry yet, but then again, I haven’t really seen the female fish either. There’s still a school of about a dozen male Endlers in here as well.

 

The plants in this tank are rotala macrandra ‘green’, rotala indica ‘red’ (or rotala colorata), Crasula helmsii, Ranalisma rostrata, marselia quadrafolia, and Heteranthera zosterifolia. I’m finally starting to win the thread algae battle in this tank. Over the previous month or two this tank had a mess of 8″ long thread algae flowing in the current. My brother commented that at least I’m able to grow “cool looking algae,” but I wasn’t amused. Thankfully, thanks to a strict SeaChem-only dosing schedule with Excel overdoses, I’m now in control.

Maybe one of these days I’ll properly trim these stem plants. I hate growing stem plants in a 12″ tall tank! At least I like the rockwork!

A few weeks ago, I came across this post on one of the cichlid forums, offering a dual language (English/German) version of a special DATZ publication on South American Dwarf Cichlids. I decided to contact the poster, Mike Wise, who consequently is the person who did the actual translation work from German to English, and is now selling copies of the book himself to folks in the United States.

This week, I received the book, and boy am I impressed. This doesn’t have the extensive information that the Cichlid Atlases have on each species, but as a simple photo log for hundreds of apistogramma or other dwarf species, with general locality information, it’s tremendous. Most species have multiple photographs, showing possible color morphs, and noting differences between different A-numbers currently attributed to the same species name. The book is organized sequentially by A-number, but the index is very comprehensive, listing both Latin and common names for fish, so they’re easy to lookup.

My only complaint for this book is that it doesn’t list pH or TDS information for each species. That said, I realize that this information is not necessarily available for every species, and even if it were, might fluctuate greatly depending on the wet/dry season.

All in all, this is a very dangerous book. It’s easy to flip through the pictures, and find some amazing species that you would like to try in your tank. I imagine many of these are hard or impossible to find unless you go collect them yourself, but it’s great to peruse nonetheless.

You can get a sample of some of the book’s pages here.

I used some time-off after Christmas to do quite a bit of maintenance on my tanks. In addition to adding the U.V. sterilizer, I also took this opportunity to rescape the tank, in an effort to hopefully clear up what had been a pretty nasty algae outbreak. When Ghazanfar, Rob, and I spent an afternoon breaking up our prized California rock, I had set one large piece aside, specifically for use in my 75G. That rock is the large rock one the left, and weighs a considerable amount.

What I didn’t realize until after I put it in the tank, in that the rock has a natural cave in it, that’s just about perfect sized for a female apistogramma, but not quite large enough for the male. In essense, it’s the perfect size, and within a day of rescaping, one of the female A. cacatuoides took up residence.

So, besides the hardscape, I left the glosso intact on the right side of the tank before my previous scape. I repurposed the anubias baterii nana in front of the rocks in the middle, and replanted the utricularia on the left side. I’m a little curious to see if the U.V. sterilizer will have any effect on the growth rate of the utricularia. Finally, for the background, I went up to what has become a plant farm of my 40G, and trimmed out a variety of stems that I thought went together. From left to right: Pogostemon stellata ‘broadleaf’, Pogostemon sp., ludwigia repens ‘narrow-leaf’, Heteranthera zosterifolia, Blyxa japonica, and Limnophilia aromatica.

Last night, I moved my Apistogramma viejita ‘Rio Meta’ pair in the 20G High tank I’ve been preparing for them. The aquascape in this tank is still developing, as is the algae, but at this point, I’m more interested in getting these beautiful fish to breed. I’ve snapped a few pictures of the viejita’s in their new home…

The male’s checking himself and his new digs out.

A. viejita female

A. viejita male