Breeding A.Cacatuoides

[apisto_shores]

My question is,is it wise to break up a breeding pair? Heres my dilemma,
I have 3 tanks: 125gal densely planted community(pair of cac's,trio of
Trifasciata's and various tetras), 75gal densely planted(pair of Cac's and
white clouds) and 10 gal with a pair of Cac's only. None have bred for
me. I've had them in this setup for three months now and no results.
In my filters I have peat, I keep the water temp at 77-80 and ph 6.2-6.5
in one tank and the other 2 is at 5.5-6.0. I was wonder should I switch
up the males or would that mess up territory's. So out of 3 pairs I got
nothing. Need help.

 

[Apistt_ed]

If they've only been in the tanks for three months, then I'd leave them in there. Are you feeding them a high protein diet (cut earthworms, brine shrimp, blackworms if possible, daphnia, etc.). This will definitely help in the females development of eggs and they will spawn for you. Don't worry if they're not quick to do their thing. They may be too young, still in the territory set-up part of the acclimation, or just not ready. Give them a month or two and see what happens. cheers john

 

[Mike Wise]

A. cacatuoides is a polygamous species. It does not form pairs. The male will breed with any female who is ready. If I had the luxury of your 75, I'd put all of the cacatuoides in it and watch the (almost) natural behaviour between these cichlids.

 

[apisto_shores]

I had at one point a trio in the 125gal and 2 pairs in the 75 gal and
they started killing each other. I lost a male and then lost a female due
to female aggression. So I split them all up into pairs. The thing is all
of the females have been yellow at least 3-4 times easy, but I never
see any fry. I have female who has the top portion of her entire dorsal and
her caudal fin and some on her anal with the triple red coloration(yellow
all the time) and the male has some nice coloration and I really want
them to produce some fry,they are in the 75 gal. Would it be a problem
if the female is older and bigger than the male?

 

[Mike Wise]

It sounds like an aquascaping problem. You need to break up the tank into areas with distinct boundaries. The fish shouldn't be able to see one side of the tank from the other & there should be 1½ - 2x as many caves as fish.

 

[apisto_shores]

Mike or anyone else I actually have 2-3 coconut shell halves per fish,
like in my 75 gal I have 7 shells and only the pair of cacatuoides. But
to my previous question does it matter if my female is larger than my
male? I would have to guess she is at full size at about 1-1/2 inch
and my male is probably 1 to 1-1/4 inch. She is yellow but doesn't
stick to any particular location in the tank, she is all over the place
and doesn't chase him away which tells me she hasn't laid any eggs,
but I thought they only turned yellow when they have laid eggs.

 

[Mike Wise]

My guess it that the fish can see each other's cave. In this case there are no visual territorial boundaries & the more dominant fish will claim a bigger share of the tank. In a tank without boundaries, male apistos of polygamous species have been seen controling almost the entire bottom of a 48x12"/120x30 cm aquarium. On the other hand, I once had 2 males and 4 females living relatively harmoniously in a small tank (16X18X8"/40x45x20 cm). The dominant female always had fry (I suspect that she was taking fry from the other females, too). This was only possible because the entire tank was one large mass of Java Moss. The fish were always out of sight from each other. The subdominant male would dive into the mossy jungle whenever the dominant male came around. The females had caves in the 4 corners of the tank. According to Römer, my tank was more typical of apisto habitats in the wild - only there they live in leaf litter instead of Java Moss.