Apisto parenting

[Apistt_ed]

Ok, I've seen this in many of my tanks and it puzzles me a little... I have had trifasciatas in a community-like tank where there are only trifasciatas with 6 females and 5 males and I constantly see that when there are fry in the tank that aren't their own because they hadn't bred with any of the females, they are really really aggressive towards the fry.

well the strange thing is, I have recently moved the bachelors (3) into a lone tank and separated it into a community condo-like tank that I have used for isolating aggressive africans/introducing them slowly & also to kill the pecking order process... and just because I had no more room for a rogue female, that kept kidnapping the fry of other females and caring for them herself, I threw her into the bachelor tank. well, within a week or so, she had a brood herself and the largest to date of any(nearing 130)! And, since that tank wasn't prepared to be a breeding tank, the fry was able to freely swim between all the males... and to my astonishment, the males all looked after the fry and the fry weren't afraid of the males at all like the ones from the community tank were afraid of them bachelors when they were in there! and now, the fry have divided out into the three separate areas with their own favorite babysitters/serrogate fathers. I thought it a little strange and weird... and wanted to share. the wonders of cichlids... I love it!

 

[cootwarm]

Hi John,

That's pretty cool! I'm suprised they were aggressive to the fry. So far I've found many apistos to be tolerant of fry other than their own.

I had 7 borellii(3m4f) in a 30 gallon long. All 4 females spawned within a couple weeks of each other. After about 4 weeks 1 female took over care of all the fry and the other 3 females spawned again!

After a while I wanted to use the tank for atahualpa I was going to get, so I moved the borellii into a couple 10 gallons and a 20 gallon. The atahualpa were very aggressive to each other on occasion, but they completely ignored the small borellii fry I accidently left behind. I missed at least 6 because now I have at least six now large borellii fry (not quite juvie size) growing up with these aggressive adult atahualpa.

On top of that, I later moved borellii again from the 20 gallon to make available for a trio of nijsseni and did the same thing. I have 4-6 small borellii fry in with my nijsseni for almost 4 weeks now and they have free run of the tank!

I also have 3 or 4 trifasciata fry in a 10 gallon with a spawning pair of Apistogramma sp "Blue". (Supposed to be related to A. sp Pebas).

It sure is hard finding all the little buggers!

Michael