Hello,
This is my first post on this excellent forum. I'm from the UK and have been keeping fish for 10 years now. My tank ia a 75 litre, fluval 204 external filter. I use RO remineralised with Tropic-marin pro-discus to get it to Gh=4, kH=2. I use peat balls from here, http://www.tynevalleyaquatics.co.uk/, and handfulls of oak leaves and get a pH around 6.8. The tank has play sand, a lot of driftwood and sumatra wood and 2 coconut caves. I've had 7 lemon tetras and 5 neon tetras in the tank for a couple of years.
I wanted to share my experience so far keeping Apistogramma for the first time. I recently added a pair of flame reds. They spawned within 1 week (30-40 fry) but lost all of the brood within a couple of weeks. Most of the fry were eaten by the tetras and I don't think I was getting enough food to them as well. The female defended them well but the male seemed to chase the tetras all around the tank (2.5ft x 1 ft footprint) rather than away from the brood, this usually drove them into the brood causing the female to disperse the brood as she tried to defend them form all angles.
They've spawned again, 1 month after the first and the male is doing a better job at keeping the lemons to one side of the tank. He's not worried about the neons so they're sneaking up on the fry, to be chased away by the female. They've been free swimming for 3 days and I'm feeding them with vinegar eels and instant baby brine shrimp (not live). I can't really tell if they're eating the food or not. Some interesting behaviour I've noticed is the female removing snails and debris (bits of leaf litter) from around the cocunuts and also collecting material from the substrate (algae, mulm etc) and spitting it into the coconut or into the brood when they're out as if she's feeding them.
This forum has been a great source of information so far so thanks everyone.
This is my first post on this excellent forum. I'm from the UK and have been keeping fish for 10 years now. My tank ia a 75 litre, fluval 204 external filter. I use RO remineralised with Tropic-marin pro-discus to get it to Gh=4, kH=2. I use peat balls from here, http://www.tynevalleyaquatics.co.uk/, and handfulls of oak leaves and get a pH around 6.8. The tank has play sand, a lot of driftwood and sumatra wood and 2 coconut caves. I've had 7 lemon tetras and 5 neon tetras in the tank for a couple of years.
I wanted to share my experience so far keeping Apistogramma for the first time. I recently added a pair of flame reds. They spawned within 1 week (30-40 fry) but lost all of the brood within a couple of weeks. Most of the fry were eaten by the tetras and I don't think I was getting enough food to them as well. The female defended them well but the male seemed to chase the tetras all around the tank (2.5ft x 1 ft footprint) rather than away from the brood, this usually drove them into the brood causing the female to disperse the brood as she tried to defend them form all angles.
They've spawned again, 1 month after the first and the male is doing a better job at keeping the lemons to one side of the tank. He's not worried about the neons so they're sneaking up on the fry, to be chased away by the female. They've been free swimming for 3 days and I'm feeding them with vinegar eels and instant baby brine shrimp (not live). I can't really tell if they're eating the food or not. Some interesting behaviour I've noticed is the female removing snails and debris (bits of leaf litter) from around the cocunuts and also collecting material from the substrate (algae, mulm etc) and spitting it into the coconut or into the brood when they're out as if she's feeding them.
This forum has been a great source of information so far so thanks everyone.
If you really want to get any fry you'll need to remove the fry predators and, ideally, use live baby brine shrimp.
