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Apistogramma cf. agassizii A239 'Pastel' ???

Bart Hazes

Active Member
Messages
228
I found a pair of A. agassizii with fry this morning and thought it was time to figure out which colour form this was. I had looked in the past but didn't find a good match. Today I think I found a potential match with specimens shown by Tom Christoffersen from a collecting trip on Río Tamshiyacu (http://apisto.sites.no/page.aspx?PageId=61). Tom suggested his specimens may correspond to the rare form called Apistogramma cf. agassizii "Pastel" (A239). Looking up A239 in the DATZ 'Sonderheft' my fish, and those found by Tom, have a more pronounced yellow head and mine differ from both in having more of the pastel blue, including in the unpaired fins.

Image of the male
AagassiziiA239male.jpg


Image of the female (sometimes she has a double flank spot like in this image, sometimes only one)
AagassiziiA239female.jpg
 

Bart Hazes

Active Member
Messages
228
I discovered that the female has a double flank spot on her left flank and a single one on her right flank. I also found out yesterday evening where she keeps her fry at night. She put them in the outlet of a internal filter that is not in use. She only barely fits inside and I wonder if she also had her eggs in their. Seems too tight a space for breeding.

AagassiziiFemalePump.jpeg
 

Bart Hazes

Active Member
Messages
228
Here is an image from a while ago with a bit darker lateral band.
Aagassizii3.jpeg


And here is a current image with a slightly more pronounced lateral band than the first picture I showed.
AagassiziiMale1.jpeg


And one more
AagassiziiMale2.jpeg


To my eyes the lateral band looks similar to the A239 image on page 104 from DATZ but I'll keep an eye out and snap more pictures if he ever develops a stronger lateral band.
 

Bart Hazes

Active Member
Messages
228
There's about 3-4 dozen of fry and the parents have been very vigilant so far. I just hope they survive my two week Xmas holidays when they won't be fed as frequently as normal. They should be able to find enough to eat in the tank but I'm more worried about the parents and other tank mates getting too hungry to resist a nice little snack. If they don't survive I'll give the pair a dedicated tank next year to try and get a good number of fry from them.
 

Bart Hazes

Active Member
Messages
228
Bart, I see your agassizii more similar to the agassizii from river nanay and also from river tapiche, but I could be wrong.

I agree those are a good match, especially some of the Nanay images. Surprisingly, Rio Nanay and Rio Tapiche are rather far separated so either this is not a regional variant or not all fish shown are listed with the correct catch location. The site http://www.akvaryumist.com/kitaplik/tatlisu_balik/cuce_cichlid/apistogramma_agassizi.html list A239 'Pastel' as being from the Uyacali, Tamshiyacu, Tapiche region, again a very wide geographic area. Finding reliable and up to date information can be very hard in my experience but I heard some people are working on a book for Apistogramma species which I hope will help us out.
 

miguelgr7

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
200
Location
Rockville, MD
I agree those are a good match, especially some of the Nanay images. Surprisingly, Rio Nanay and Rio Tapiche are rather far separated so either this is not a regional variant or not all fish shown are listed with the correct catch location. The site http://www.akvaryumist.com/kitaplik/tatlisu_balik/cuce_cichlid/apistogramma_agassizi.html list A239 'Pastel' as being from the Uyacali, Tamshiyacu, Tapiche region, again a very wide geographic area. Finding reliable and up to date information can be very hard in my experience but I heard some people are working on a book for Apistogramma species which I hope will help us out.
That's right, the similarity of them is impressive, I also hope that this book is available soon and has updated information that would help us a lot.
 

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