• Hello guest! Are you an Apistogramma enthusiast? If so we invite you to join our community and see what it has to offer. Our site is specifically designed for you and it's a great place for Apisto enthusiasts to meet online. Once you join you'll be able to post messages, upload pictures of your fish and tanks and have a great time with other Apisto enthusiasts. Sign up today!

Apistogramma/SA Cichlid books?

Mottfish

New Member
5 Year Member
Messages
4
Location
Bristol, UK.
Hello folks,

For a long while now I've wanted to set up a tank dedicated to keeping and perhaps breeding some kind of Apistogramma. (Never kept any before.)

I was wondering if you could recommend any good or 'essential' books with plenty of good info. about Apistos to help me with my research etc.? I'd especially like something that could help me identify them with info. about the environment they live in in the wild if possible. (And hopefully show the true colours of the fish/unedited.)

I'd like to keep a wild type of apisto, though nothing to challenging? Any suggestions?

Hopefully water conditions won't be a problem as I'd use rainwater as theres usually plenty here in the UK. Anyone use rainwater? Do you do anything to it before adding to tank?

Many thanks.
 

ste12000

Member
5 Year Member
Messages
619
Location
Cheshire..UK
Hi Mottfish, welcome to the forum..Its good to have a fellow brit aboard.

Books!!! you should search high and low for a copy of the Mergus cichlid atlas 1 and 2..These two books contain all the info you will ever need on the vast majority of south american dwarf cichlids. Book 1 is very hard to find but with patience you should find one secondhand..
Whilst you look for that book buy a copy of American cichlids 1 - Dwarf cichlids by Horst Linke and Dr Wolfgang Staeck..This is the next best book for good solid info. Goodluck.
 

apistobob

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
161
Location
N.W. USA
Mottfish,

I am always glad to see people who look before they leap and it is good that you want to know what you are doing before you start. As ste12000 mentioned the Mergus (Romer) Atlas I is the best book but the English language version is almost impossible to find. If you read German you will do fine with the book. I do not recommend Vol II for beginning dwarf cichlid keepers.

There are a couple of general info books that provide a good overview of how to set up and keep these great fishes but they are getting out of date. Here is a link to a dwarf cichlid book review page that I have put together.

www.dwarfcichlid.com/Book_reviews.php

As you learn more and begin to have specific questions, the folks on this forum are among the most knowledgeable apisto keepers around and you can almost always find a good answer to any question.

Best of luck.

Bob
 

dw1305

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,755
Location
Wiltshire UK
Rainwater

Hi Mottfish,
I'm in Corsham (20 miles east of Bristol) and I've used rainwater without any problems for the last 2 years. I collect it with a down-pipe diverter and the only filtering I do is that I have 2 water butts (with lids) connected together, so that any feathers, moss, birds nests etc. end up in the first one, and I take the water from the second one. I give the butts a clean (just with a hose/tap water) every winter. I change 10% of the tanks every day, in the summer I take it straight from the butt, in the winter I have a days supply in the house to warm up before I use it. I usually have a look at/smell of the water before I tip it in, and its usually got some Daphnia swimming in it, which I take as a good sign. When I started to use it I mixed it with a little tap water to give some buffering, but I've found it doesn't need it.

In fact the main disadvantage I've found is that the rainwater has a higher pH, and conductivity, than you might expect (pH 7 - 7.2, conductivity 100 - 200 micro-siemens), possibly because it's picking up carbonate rich dust (aerial or from the roof) on the way down. As a comparison, our de-ionised water (I work in a lab) has a pH of approx 6 and a conductivity of 4-5 microsiemens and "Corsham tap" is almost infinitely buffered with a pH of 7.8 and conductivity of 800 - 900 microsiemens.

The pH reading is a bit of a red herring really, because both the de-ionised and rainwater have very little buffering capacity and a very small addition of acid (H+) or base (OH-, but in this case all calcium carbonate) has a very large effect on the pH.

Apistogramma cacatuoides breed in my rainwater without any problem, but I'm not sure it would be soft enough for the more black water Apistogramma species.

cheers Darrel (I've got plenty of cacatuoides "Double Red juveniles (some sexable) if you want to PM me.)
 

dw1305

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,755
Location
Wiltshire UK
Apistobobs website and books

Hi again,
Should have also said I've found this web-site, Microman's and particularly ApistoBob's web site really useful, and also "South American Dwarf Cichlids" by Hans J. Mayland & Dieter Bork. (I got my copy form Steve Simpson books).
cheers Darrel
 

Refael Hdr.

Member
5 Year Member
Messages
133
Location
Tel Aviv, Israel
Does anybody know what happened to the publication of Cichlid Atlas 1 new edition?
It was supposed to be published early this year, but from some reason it didn't...
 

Hubbynz

New Member
5 Year Member
Messages
2
Location
Manly, Sydney, Australia
I recently purchased Dwarf Cichlids by Linke and Staeck. It is a nice and affordable beginners guide to dwarfs with lots of illustrations and details on their natural environment, care and breeding. Maybee a bit dated now but a nice lil all-rounder.

aspitobobs reviews are good.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
17,915
Messages
116,201
Members
13,027
Latest member
tonc61

Latest profile posts

Josh wrote on anewbie's profile.
Testing
EDO
Longtime fish enthusiast for over 70years......keen on Apistos now. How do I post videos?
Looking for some help with fighting electric blue rams :(
Partial updated Peruvian list have more than this. Please PM FOR ANY QUESTIONS so hard to post with all the ads poping up every 2 seconds….
Top