apistogramma advice

[Kenshin]

hi there i live in australia and recently bought 3 A. panduro however 4 days after they were purchased 2 have died, they were put in a moderately planted 3ft 149L aquarium

i came home the other day to one dead and the other not looking so good so i moved it and it died anyway all three seemed to be female and were about 1 inch long

im about to rescape the 3fter heavily and include a heap of apisto orientated pots as well as alot of other structure to break up the terrain and create territorys my water is a stable ph 7 however im going to add aqua soil amazonia 2 to crash the ph as much as i can as my tap water is 8.2

after observation i belive the remaining apisto female smashed the **** out of the other 2 until they died

im currently sourcing other apistos of all species and have just purchased a heap of smaller 2-2 n ahalf ft tanks(i have 3 62L, 2 50L and 2 30/35L tanks) i was wondering if you guys had any apisto orientated advice to throw at me as id love to produce some fry from them

 

[Mike Wise]

I think you are heading in the right direction. My only suggestion is to try to soften the water. I imagine that you have a high carbonate hardness in your water, considering that you have a pH over 8. Try to get it below 5º dKH.

 

[Kenshin]

hey mike yea i know my tap water sucks hence why im buying a bag of the aqua soil it is designed for hard tap water like mine to suck the hardness out of it and make it soft water its around 100 bucks a 9L bag if i start getting offspring out of some apisto's ill fork out for an RO unit

 

[ed seeley]

The effect of Aquasoil is only temporary in my experience and when new the aquasoil will release pretty big amounts of ammonia into the water. I would not use it for water conditioning. It is incredible for growing aquatic plants in though and you will never achieve results as good with other substrates IME.

You'd be better off spending your $ on an RO unit from the start. If you can't afford that then (depending on your local rainfall and weather patterns) rain water is a good low cost alternative. Just make sure anything you use to collect it with is non-toxic and clean and make sure you filter it thoroughly through carbon first to remove any nasties.

 

[Kenshin]

ahh bugger looks like ill be opting for an RO unit wonder if i can pick one up for under 200 bucks

 

[ed seeley]

I don't know about in Aus but over here you can get a good quality 50 gpd system for £80. That's all I have and it fills a 100l water barrel with an automatic shut-off system and provides me with about 80l of water in one go and it refills overnight so I could do that amount of water changes each day if needed. If I needed more water in one go I'd just use a larger water barrel, but the 100l one fits easily in my garage!

 

[Kenshin]

i had a quick look at some aussie online fish shops i can pick up a 3 stage system for 180-250 plus postage

ill definatly be grabbing one of these in afew months pitty i cant breed apisto spp in ph 7 water

might be grabbing some agrazzi's or double red cac's tomorrow though

 

[Kenshin]

just a couple of quick and silly questions

can i use fine gravel in my apisto breeding setups or do they require sand? i have sand in the 3fter and the others are currently fully cycled bare bottem tanks that i will of course put substrates and decor in as i aquire the apistogrammas

so far iv found i can get agrazzis cacs and macmasteri am unsure of which species to start with and of course i have my panduro that i will be keeping an everwatchfull eye out for a male for her

 

[ed seeley]

A 3 stage system will be fine. I don't think you need the 4th, deionising stage for freshwater fish. I would look at a water butt/barrel and an automatic shut-off too as it makes using RO water almost as easy as using tap water - otherwise you have to wait a long while for the RO unit to produce water (it only slowly drips out of the RO unit) and you have to monitor it while it's doing that so you don't flood the room the RO unit's in!

Personally I'd go with the cacs if you want a good starter apisto. I've found aggies to be quite frustrating at times and my nijsenni were much easier than them to breed and keep! Plus they're really nice and colourful if you get a good strain and will be easy to move onto your LFS.

 

[gingerbeer]

Couple of things.

Firstly as far as water goes - check your water from the tap. Lately the guys on tap water are reporting that the water is quite soft from the taps - and hence a week sitting with an airstone can fix a lot of problems.

Secondly - I am located up in Brissy and there is a bit of good stuff around - check out bettamuse's posts.

Steve

 

[Kenshin]

hey ginger i used to live in brisbane, im currently located in perth at the moment though everyone around here complains that the water is hard as nails and i test the ph out of the tap at 8.2-8.4 i run all the water i use through a home made peat filter into an ageing bucket that i normally leave for a day or so with some conditioner put in it i can normaly get the ph down a single degree (the ph in all my tanks are steady 7ph) i will setup a 2end ageing barrel and throw a big airstone in it and test it after a week i would be extreamly happy if this is all i will have to do!!!

there is stuff all in the way of dwarfs around perth at the moment 2 stores have agrazzi's and cacs however one store wants 60 bucks for a male female pair and the other sells 30 bucks for 2 (to young to sex) i have found another shop that has a confirmed trio of 1m 2f macmasteri for 60 though so im considering these then a pair of cacs next (normal and "goldens?" availible unsure what the golden cacs look like though)

 

[Kenshin]

picked up a trio of macmasteri today ill see how they go, and then i think ill grab another spp in afew weeks

 

[gingerbeer]

Typicallly price wise - you can expect to pay aounrd $30 for an imported apisto - the cheaper ones will be localy bred.

I haven't seen any of the golden cacatoides as yet. But generally with cacs - look for deformations around the mouth. There are a lot of poor local bred cacatoides around

 

[Kenshin]

yeh all the places i scoured for apisto's agrazzi's double reds were 70 for a pair, normal agrazzi's that look like the wild ones were only about 10 each, the cac's are about 15-20 each

when i went to get my macmasteri i saw these small west african dwarf cichlids that iv never seen mentioned before "egyptian mouthbrooder" they are fairly colourfull and mouthbrooders only get about 3inches i may get a small group of these as well

 

[kristina]

So are you still looking into getting an RO unit? Mine was a bit pricey, closer to $500 AU, but sweet mother of mercy she does the job. My tap is 7.8 and it drops that down to 6.2 before aging, after aging it drops to 6 on the nose. Mine is a 4 stage with re-mineralization, which basically means it has a limestone cartridge, which I have bypassed but intend upon replacing for another cartridge. How the apistos going? Keeping them alive and well? Stick to the cacs until you are confident to move onto more difficult species.

 

[Kenshin]

hey kristina yea im looking into the ro unit but it will be about two months off i saw a 4stage unit for 185 and another for 250 (think it was on guppys or the reefshop or some such aussie online aquarium shop)

i got a bargin on 1m 2f Apistogramma macmasteri they are doing good so far coloured up alot more since i got them home seems the larger female is domonant and trys to have a go at the other female but iv put in heaps of pots and plus theres plants and the tank in question is 3ft long so theres some room to play i also saw a suggestion on this site that if one of the harrased females is starting to hang around the top corner that she is copping it pretty bad so i used mikes suggestion and put a black hide up in each corner which she uses when she feels harrassed

i also have my female panduro which if i come accross a male i will snap it up and i intend on getting a pair of cacs in a month or so

all my tanks are currently on a steady 7.0 ph and im playing around with how to get it lower till i get my RO unit

on a lighter note my rams spawned for the 2end time today i hope they dont eat this lot :S

 

[kristina]

good luck with the Rams. Mine have eaten every batch so far and the female is doing strange things with the last 2 batches. She builds up the eggs and then when she is about to burst she only lays a few... like 6 or 7ish and then the male protects them while she tries to eat them immediately. She waits until the next day and does the same. The male is ripping her to bits and I have to continually seperate them. My pH in their tank is at 7.2, but I'm having issues with eco-complete with the RO. I don't fully understand it, but it is bumping my pH up.

What cacs are you looking for?! I read above the golden ones.... is orange close enough? A shop here sells orange cacs from asia on a semi-regular basis for about $80 per pair...

congrats on the macmasteri. Good luck with the panduro. I really like the panduro, but have never kept them.

 

[Kenshin]

the rams this will be their 2end spawn the first one got to day 3 (hatching day) and the rams ate them (im geussing when they became wrigglers), this spawn is quiet large about double the size of the first im unsure of if i should leave them in with the eggs and see if the first spawn repeats itself or if i should take them out on the third day before they hatch

the cac's im unsure of which morph i want i quiet like the tripple reds and the orange's im struggling to find a good picture of so i dont know, as tank space free's up i may look into more then just the cac's, mcmasteri and panduro. maby double red aggrazi's or borrielii think ill get the ro unit first

the ro problem with aqua soil is a strange one i thought it would rip your ph right down as thats what it does with my hard tap water

 

[kristina]

yeah... go figure with the RO and eco-complete substrate. Got me stumped! Tap water 7.8, RO 6.2, aged RO 6.0 and in the tank is 7.2 so someone upstairs must hate me...

hmmm, take them out at day 3 is my vote, but see how they go. Do they eat them when the lights are off and you aren't watching? I found that mine lasted longer if I kept the lights on overnight, but still didn't have wrigglers even. Low pH, soft water and lots of live food helps, but it's not a sure-fire solution to breeding rams.

 

[Kenshin]

when you age your water how do you do it? do you leave it in a bucket for a week or what

at the moment i throw a big airstone in my 120L bucket all water in the bucket has been thrown through my peat filter and leave it for a night should i be leaving it for a week? will it make a difference to the ph?