Borelliis?

[Meghan]

Hello everyone,
I have a m/f pair of yellow-faced apisto borelliis (is it borellii or borelli?) which I got from a friend of mine.
I've had them for about a month and a half. For the first few weeks of my having them they showed remarkable vivid colours and were somewhat more curious about my comings and goings than the other fish that I've had.
However, they've lately not been showing their yellow colouring at all, and don't seem as interested in what's going on. I've been doing regular (weekly 25%) water changes, and the PH is at about 7.0 but I'm slowly lowering it back to the ideal 6.8 over a period of days. I've been feeding them Cichlid flakes, although they don't seem to be voracious eaters and I haven't actually seen them feeding yet.
Any suggestions?

(Btw - 76L tank, fine gravel substrate, sword and ambulia, a few hiding places - rocks, and a small upside down teracotta pot. Currently sharing with 3 juvenile yoyo loaches, 2 common bristlenose and 2 dwarf gourami. I have bristlenose fry at the moment otherwise they would be living by themselves in a 30l tank with simmilar ornaments/substrate.)

 

[Mike Wise]

First of all, give the fish some frozen foods if you cannot offer live food. Most apistos don't accept dry foods readily. They probably are not getting enough to eat.

The Yoyo Loaches can be rather active fish. A. borellii (correct spelling) are not as outgoing. They might be a bit shy around your loaches.

 

[Meghan]

Thanks for the reply Mike. I'll give the frozen food a go, is there anything you would reccommend, or just something standard like blood worms or brine shrimp? Also, is freeze-dried okay, or do you mean actual frozen food? Because I'd heard that there can be some issues with frozen food and disease?

 

[Mike Wise]

You can try them on freeze-dried foods, but in my experience frozen is accepted better. Try a variety of frozen foods: brine shrimp, mosquito larvae, daphnia, blood worms (if you aren't alergic to them like me), mysis shrimp, etc. There is no disease problem with frozen food as long as it has not been thawed and later refrozen. Don't buy bags that have wavy, rippled areas. These usually indicate refreezing of thawed bags.

 

[bigbird]

Hello Meghan,

Just in case you are not aware, a trick I use with frozen food, it to take a glass and get some of the actual aquarium water, then thaw the frozen food in this water, use it when it reaches the room temp. just a thought. cheers