Behavior and coloration

[raymond82]

Hi all,

I'm observing my apistogramma's a lot lately and I have a couple of questions:

First about my A. Panduro's, I have a trio and I understand that usually a pair forms and the second female will have a hard time. The trio is still quite young (I'm not sure how young but the male is about 5 cm, the females around 3) and so far I haven't seen much that indicates pair bonding or spawning. However, today I noticed that one of the females looks smaller, less colorful and skinnier than the other female. At the same time I don't see much interaction between the three of them, they all seem to be going their own way most of the time.

Here's the questions:

Is this an indication that the bigger female is the dominant one that will form a pair with the male?

When will pair bonding usually happen? Will it happen before a first spawn or also without readiness to spawn (I doubt that my water is soft enough now for them to spawn, but I'm slowly working towards this)?

Then about my macmasteri's:

I see a lot of different colors on my macmasteri female, her color varies from grayish to bright yellow and the lateral band appears on and off. How can I interpret these color changes?

These were a lot of questions again (and I have plenty more), what book/website would be the best to learn more about general apistogramma (spawning) behavior/coloration? With a book or website I could do some self-studying before posting all these questions...

Thank you!

 

[Mike Wise]

Yes, a lot of questions! I'll try to answer them.

For the A. panduro trio, the larger female probably is the dominant female in the tank. This does not necessarily mean that she will bond and breed with the male. In most apisto species it is the female who decides with whom she breeds. If, for some reason, the female does not consider the male a suitable mate, then she will ignore him (or trash him) and wait for a more suitable mate. Fortunately, this doesn't happen most times. You will know when you have a pair bond when a male and female tend to stay together more than not. Courtship occurs after bonding. Pre-spawning courtship usually lasts only 5-15 minutes before spawning occurs. Apistos will spawn under less than optimal condition, but don't expect the eggs to hatch. When this happens, the eggs are often eaten. There is no sense for the female wasting nutrition on eggs that don't develop.

For the macs: apistos like most cichlids use color as a means of communication. On female macs, grey typically means that she is not ready to breed or is being submissive; yellow indicates that the female is the dominant female and defending a territory or is interested in breeding; bright canary yellow with deep black contrasting markings means that she has eggs/fry.

 

[raymond82]

Thank you very much, exactly the information I was looking for to slowly learn to understand what's going on in my aquariums!