A. sp. Alto Tapiche

[Ben Rhau]

No question at the moment, just wanted to share a picture. Given the price of the wilds, I didn't think I'd be able to get this fish. Fortunate to get an F1 pair. Here is the male, in his first full day of quarantine.

 

[Ben Rhau]

Update:

The pair has been quarantining for two weeks in the tank pictured in this thread.

I had to separate them after the first week, since the male wanted to breed immediately and the female wasn't ready. There was a lot of chasing, and she did suffer some fin damage, so I installed a divider in the tank.

After just 1 - 2 days of being separated, the female began to show breeding colors and has been bright yellow ever since. She gets fed very well and the fins are recovering rapidly.

I'll keep them separated until the female is fully recovered, but if I had to do this over again, I might separate them in the beginning until they are settled in a bit more to the new tank and both accustomed to the feeding routine.

 

[anewbie]

I'm confused - are they normally expensive? THere is a fellow in NC selling them for $15 each (f2).

 

[Ben Rhau]

Probably got one of them from the same seller. These are F1s. The wilds are very expensive.

 

[Ben Rhau]

For more color, there is only one seller of wild caught specimens who has been sitting on a lot of inventory due to not being willing to budge on price. I only know of three wild caught pairs in the United States. Two in NC, and one in PA. They've helped the market out a lot by breeding them. Prior to that, Alto Tapiche have not been in the hobby in this part of the world, so it's a nice opportunity to get in on a species that had been rare until now.

 

[anewbie]

Will they breed in tap water or do they require soft acidic water to breed?

 

[Ben Rhau]

We know that these bred at about TDS 100. That’s what my quarantine is at, and it looks like they want to breed. We don’t have many other reports beyond the conditions at the catch location, which is quite a bit softer.

 

[anewbie]

Are you breeding them at tap ph or did you lower the ph? Did the seller provide any comments on his breeding conditions? Curious how it works out - of course these seem a bit more aggressive than the more common apisto.

 

[Ben Rhau]

My tap water is soft, but has a high pH due to added NaOH. With driftwood and botanicals, my tank pH levels out at around neutral. I will see if they breed at this pH, which I suspect they will. If not, I can lower the pH with peat. I'd prefer not to, though. They are considered fairly easy to breed once they are happy with the water.

 

[yukondog]

Good luck.

 

[Mike Wise]

There is a difference between breeding and successful reproduction of offspring. Many apistos will breed in liquid cement but rarely are successful raising fry.

 

[Ben Rhau]

Sure. So these F1s were bred and raised at pH 6.5, TDS 100. Do you think it’s a bad idea to try to breed them at pH (6.8 - 7.0) TDS 100?

 

[Mike Wise]

That is where I would start. If unsuccessful, then start lowering the pH and hardness until successful.

 

[Ben Rhau]

That’s the plan; start with the point of less resistance. If unsuccessful, I still have some peat around, and my tap does fluctuate between 25 and 100.

 

[Bowluvr]

That s

I'm confused - are they normally expensive? THere is a fellow in NC selling them for $15 each (f2).

I believe they are $15 because they are unsexed? At least the last time I saw one of his adverts he was selling them as an unsexed group.

 

[Bowluvr]

My tap water is soft, but has a high pH due to added NaOH. With driftwood and botanicals, my tank pH levels out at around neutral. I will see if they breed at this pH, which I suspect they will. If not, I can lower the pH with peat. I'd prefer not to, though. They are considered fairly easy to breed once they are happy with the water.

You can also let them breed in your unadulterated tap water, and transfer the eggs to a hatching/rearing tank with better parameters for hatching. Then do small water changes to slowly bring it back to your normal tap water conditions. I found them easy to breed, but on the aggressive side with one another.

 

[anewbie]

You can also let them breed in your unadulterated tap water, and transfer the eggs to a hatching/rearing tank with better parameters for hatching. Then do small water changes to slowly bring it back to your normal tap water conditions. I found them easy to breed, but on the aggressive side with one another.

Hum. This is interesting. So when my apisto lay eggs on driftwood - i can move the driftwood to softer water and they will hatch? This isn't really related to the op but i have some hongsloi that routinely lay eggs that never hatch but i could setup a pail with some tap water mixed with a bottle of ro water easy enough.... might be fun to get a bunch of baby hogs.

 

[Ben Rhau]

I believe they are $15 because they are unsexed? At least the last time I saw one of his adverts he was selling them as an unsexed group.

Nice to see you here! Ethan sold me a sexed and unrelated pair, so it was more than $15 but still nowhere near the cost of the wilds.

You can also let them breed in your unadulterated tap water, and transfer the eggs to a hatching/rearing tank with better parameters for hatching. Then do small water changes to slowly bring it back to your normal tap water conditions. I found them easy to breed, but on the aggressive side with one another.

That's an interesting technique, and something I might try if I don't have success in the main tank.

Re: aggression. It's funny, I have a tank divider set up in the QT, and it has two small gaps near the top when the water level is higher than the side frame. The gaps are big enough for the female to pass, but not the male. If I leave these gaps open, the female will enter the male's side, but be brutally chased away until she retreats back to her side. At first, I thought she was entering the male's side by accident, a bit like a fish trap. However, she definitely knows how to get back to her own side, which implies she's intentionally going over to court the male. She's bright yellow.

Since it hasn't been working out yet, I've closed the gaps with filter floss for now until I can transfer them to the main tank (which should be soon). There's a lot more structure there, and if I let her stake out her territory for a few days first, I think that will be better.

 

[Bowluvr]

Hum. This is interesting. So when my apisto lay eggs on driftwood - i can move the driftwood to softer water and they will hatch? This isn't really related to the op but i have some hongsloi that routinely lay eggs that never hatch but i could setup a pail with some tap water mixed with a bottle of ro water easy enough.... might be fun to get a bunch of baby hogs.

Hi. Sorry for the delayed reply, but I don't often get notifications, and am bad at remembering to check any forums. Eggs not hatching could be an infertile male, or a pair that isn't doing the job right, either because he isn't trying or she isn't letting him. If you can catch the eggs out fairly soon after they spawn, and your water is not too hard (pH is less of an issue than hardness) to begin with, you can certainly try moving them to softer water and adding in an alder cone or two and a small square of IAL. These help combat fungus, especially the alder cone. I remove the cone once they hatch, and leave only a small bit of the leaf for the bubble snails or "pest" ramshorn snails I then add (they will eat eggs, but small snails usually don't bother fry, so I add them only after the eggs hatch). Just a few do the trick. The snails eat excess food, any dead babies, any unhatched eggs that may still be in there, and munch on the piece of leaf when nothing else is around. They help keep the container from fouling, and I always have better success with them. Since my tap water is pretty soft, I also add in a small piece of shell of coral rubble (like... SMALL) to the cup to stabilize pH after the eggs hatch. My tap is soft, but it comes out of the tap around neutral. Doing water changes if I didn't add that bit of calcium carbonate would mean a constant pH roller coaster, which can kill fry. I don't water change hatching eggs. I only start water changes once they hatch, starting small, and getting larger as the wrigglers develop into fry, and as fry grow. I like to be able to do at least 50% container changes before I move them into an actual grow-out tank. I do not use fresh tap water for containers. I keep aged water of the same temperature in my fish room for this.

 

[anewbie]

Hi. Sorry for the delayed reply, but I don't often get notifications, and am bad at remembering to check any forums. Eggs not hatching could be an infertile male, or a pair that isn't doing the job right, either because he isn't trying or she isn't letting him. If you can catch the eggs out fairly soon after they spawn, and your water is not too hard (pH is less of an issue than hardness) to begin with, you can certainly try moving them to softer water and adding in an alder cone or two and a small square of IAL. These help combat fungus, especially the alder cone. I remove the cone once they hatch, and leave only a small bit of the leaf for the bubble snails or "pest" ramshorn snails I then add (they will eat eggs, but small snails usually don't bother fry, so I add them only after the eggs hatch). Just a few do the trick. The snails eat excess food, any dead babies, any unhatched eggs that may still be in there, and munch on the piece of leaf when nothing else is around. They help keep the container from fouling, and I always have better success with them. Since my tap water is pretty soft, I also add in a small piece of shell of coral rubble (like... SMALL) to the cup to stabilize pH after the eggs hatch. My tap is soft, but it comes out of the tap around neutral. Doing water changes if I didn't add that bit of calcium carbonate would mean a constant pH roller coaster, which can kill fry. I don't water change hatching eggs. I only start water changes once they hatch, starting small, and getting larger as the wrigglers develop into fry, and as fry grow. I like to be able to do at least 50% container changes before I move them into an actual grow-out tank. I do not use fresh tap water for containers. I keep aged water of the same temperature in my fish room for this.

Can you quality soft ? My tap is gh 7 kh 3 tds around 115-125.