First time A. cacatuoides pair

[bbeddes]

First time A. cacatuoides pair (updated 4/4/2010)

Hello,

I was fortunate enough to win a pair of A. cacatuoides 'orange flash' at a local club auction this weekend. Though I'm not new to fish or aquaria, this is my first time with Apistos of any species, and I am hooked!

The only information I was able to get from the breeder was that these are young adults that may not be fully mature and ready to breed yet. He could not provide a more specific age.

My question is in regards to the male. He has good fin color, but not a very large dorsal with pronounced rays like I see in pictures of this species. He doesn't have the elongated tailfin rays (lyretail), either. Will these develop as he ages, or do some males not have them? As best I can measure through the glass, he is about 1.75" or 4.5 cm.

Thanks,

Bryan

 

[Bilbo]

Firstly congratulations they are lovely fish and a really great way to get indroduced to apisto's.

At 4.5cm he should have some nice fin extensions but they will get better as he grows. Are you measuring total length of the fish to the tip of the tail or up to the caudal peduncle

 

[bbeddes]

Thanks for the reply. 4.5 cm would be the approx. total measurement to the very end of his tail. Right now his tail is flat-ended like a broom... much like the female's (only colored) No apparent extensions. He does have dorsal spines, just not very impressive. I'm hoping those will develop and become more pronounced. After all, what good is a cockatoo without a crest? :biggrin:

This is the third day I have had them, and I'm just now noticing some obvious courtship behavior. He's been flaring a lot and doing his little tail brush dance with the female. Her response thus far seems to be lukewarm, or maybe she's just being coy... I don't have a clue.

 

[Mike Wise]

Orange Flash A. cacatuoides is a domestic color strain. No wild A. cacatuoides looks anything like it. Like any other domestically 'enhanced' fish, some feature (in this case fin color) are emphasized to the detriment of other features. For years color seemed to hold so much importance that the length of the finnage was ignored. This led to highly colored, but short fins on males of Orange Flash and Red cacatuoides. Fortunately, now that the color is fairly well set in these strains, other features like finnage length are being selected and some of the impressive finnage seen on wild males is reappearing. Your fish are still small so there is a good chance that the finnage will grow. It depends on the quality of the breeding stock whether the fins are long or short, but I doubt that any will be as long as on wild males.

 

[bbeddes]

Thanks, Mike. That is very informative and helpful. It's very understandable as you explain that when a single characteristic is selected for exclusively, it would come at the expense of other desirable traits. Hopefully the finnage will become a little more impressive with maturity.... if not, at least he has nice color.

 

[bbeddes]

A little over 3 weeks have passed since my initial post regarding a young pair of A. cacatuoides that I had just obtained. I was concerned because the male didn't have the characteristic finnage that I thought he should.

My dumb beginner concerns were unfounded. I guess he was just immature. In this short amount of time he has grown noticeably, both in body size and fin extensions.

I'm also happy to report that he is a new father. The female has emerged with their first brood of fry and I have been glued to the tank all day watching them forage. Very cool stuff!

 

[animalmgc]

congrats on your first batch of fry