Nanochromis Transvestitus current experience

[anewbie]

On Feb 13 I ordered a pair of Nanochromis Transvestitus which arrived on Feb 14 2026. I had wanted Nanochromis teugelsi but they had sold out between making my order and shipping.

I had a 29 with some tucano, morse code tetra and humming bird tetra setup with 3 female wc elizabeth. Since I could no longer obtain a male and these were wc i chose to treat them as abandoned (i.e, unable to match them with a wc male from the same location which is a real pitty because i believe they are lovely blue form and not the ugly red you frequently see but i digress).
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Like all my dwarf cichild aquarium I use ro water exclusively and the ec is around 40 with a ph around 6.2. I had read that this fish was extremely picky about water parameters and partners but i did not notice much of an issue. The female was always out and the male more reclusive. Like most of my dwarf cichild i fed them ground up bug bite with a little bit of algae max mixed in though for the past month or 6 weeks i've been feeding frozen brine shrimp more often. Maybe 3 or 4 times a week but no set cycle. All the fishes seem happy with the dry foods i feed them though a few of them do seem to go 'wild' for the shrimp they still are happy to eat dry food.

I never really noticed aggression between the m/f nor did i notice and indication of bonding or mating but around Apr 20 of 2026 I noticed a bunch of frys sitting out in front:

Well since then i started hatching bbs for them - they looked several days old but the next morning I couldn't find any of them so i presume i had not fed them fast enough. Then on wednesday i saw one poking out (i put bbs in on t and w 3 times a day but small quantity due to poor hatchiing). Then on thursday i saw 20 of them and they quickly developed pink bellies. This is friday and i saw a few of them but didn't get a good count. I also discovered the male has dug a network of tunnels under the driftwood so he can trasverse the entire aquarium without showing himself. Last but least they are much more aggressive to the female elizabeth which are higher up now (it is a 29 gallon aquarium which is 30 long 12 wide and 18 high - inches).

In truth i did not do much to encourage them and i can either conclude they are very easy to keep or i'm lucky again.

 

[anewbie]

While they are always in general area of the frys you can't locate the frys by finding the parents. They are usually not right on top of the frys. this is a picture of some common kribs i had back in 2019 or 2020. I only kept them a year because they are prolific breeders. Here we can see the female guarding her frys. Also with apisto locating the female usually gives you an idea of where to find the frys. That does not seem so true in this case - at first i thought the female and male were just roaming randomly though in truth i think they are looking for predators but they don't heard the frys at least visually as these other frys do though it is possible they are signaling the fry in some manner that my casual observation failed to detect.

 

[Jonathan A]

Well this has made me slightly less nervous about introducing my new male to the female XD. I started with a group of 4 juvenile females and they were very chill with each other until they were closer to full grown; now there's a very clear hierarchy. Every report I've read or heard mentioned pairs can break at any moment and then they lost a fish, so I might move a pair into a 40B and cross my fingers.

 

[anewbie]

Well this has made me slightly less nervous about introducing my new male to the female XD. I started with a group of 4 juvenile females and they were very chill with each other until they were closer to full grown; now there's a very clear hierarchy. Every report I've read or heard mentioned pairs can break at any moment and then they lost a fish, so I might move a pair into a 40B and cross my fingers.

Well - mine haven't divorced yet but it has only been a few months and this is the first brood. I have had fishes break up before (most frequently angels) and the results have not been pretty.

 

[anewbie]

Hum. Only been a few days but the frys might be doing ok. I took these two pictures but they aren't very good. There are a lot of 1 to 1 1/2 inch cubbyholes where driftwood join that are partly obsecure by plants - In addition it appears the parents have dug a network of tunnels as they can move under the driftwood and similar for most of the aquarium.

The few times i have seen the frys one has poked his nose out of the hole to get some bbs or maybe just curious and mom quickly pushes it back down:

In this picture you see the mother nose and the brown stuff to the right is actually the edge of a piece of driftwood.

This is another one similar picture but a different area. Anyway the few frys i've seen seem to have double in size in this short period but i really never see them. Both parents will come out at feeding time though the mom quickly returns.
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In unrelated news the kribs from Polongwe spawned. While they are (or were sold as) wc they do not seem to be quite as good parents as the domestic kribs i had few years back. Still the frys seem to be getting by for now. This is not shocking (that they bred) but the pairing behavior was less obvious (to me) then it was with the domestics. Anyway i presume they will be easy enough and not that exciting beyond being a lot of eye candy. I got rid of the domestics after a year because they were too prolific - i wonder what will happen with these.