Hello everybody

[orkunk]

Hello everybody. My name is Orkun and I live in Turkey. I am married for 3 years and with my wife we are waiting hopefully for our first child to be born in this August.

I have just registered to this forum today and I hope I can make many new friends with valuable fish keeping experience. Currently I have 3 apistos. They were 4 (being two couples) until a few days ago when I lost my Tefe redback (this was what the LFS had written to name the fish) female due to bloat. Now I have 1 Tefe redback male, 1 agassizii male and 1 agassizii female.

My tank is a 80 L planted one. I am using lava stone crumbles as the substrate. There is one big chunk of driftwood in the tank with a hollow space in the interior side of it which seems to me as a perfect natural cave. The fish also seem to love that. Besides the apistos, I have 7 harlequin rasboras, one couple of Endler's guppies, 3 otocinclus and 3 corydoras sterbai in the tank. Nearly half of the water surface is covered with growing Riccia so the light from two 39 W T-5 lamps are sheltered a little bit for the sake of the apistos. The temperature is kept around 27-28 degrees Celcius. Since approximately 2 months, I have been using R/O water for the tank.

Due to breeding purposes, I had taken a 20 L empty tank from one of my friends and I have put the agassizii couple in it. It has a bare bottom, some pieces of coconut shells, tree roots (I can not remember the exact name currently, but one being used to give a blackwater tint to the water). Unfortunately, I waited for nearly 2 months but couldn't succeed in a living spawn. However, I am sure some egg laying have taken place and I am saying this according to my observations of the changes in my female's overall morphology in time. Before I separated them from the planted tank due to the incoming Tefe redback couple, I had even witnessed the eggs on the cave ceiling. But she is always eating the eggs in less than 24 hours.

Now, I made a decision to mate the agassizii female with the Tefe redback male. Maybe some of you who are strict with species preservation will be angry with this decision of mine. But here in Turkey, we are not so rich in different fish species in the local fish stores and some good species of fish are arriving very rarely. And the guy who sold me the apistos is constantly refusing to sell only one female. He says that he had 10 extra males even now, and he can not alter the female to male ratio any more. And I am sure you will agree that there is no good in buying a new couple and resulting in a total number of 3 ever fighting males and 2 females. But I really want to have some offspring from these beatiful fish. Maybe the fault was with the agassizii male and the previous batches of eggs were never fertilized. So I really want to try my chance once more with the Tefe redback male + agassizii female. Do anyone think this would work? I would really appreciate any clues and opinions.

So long for a first thread but I am so full of quesitons to share with other experienced apisto breeders The second problem of mine is feeding. My apistos had never accepted dry prepared food. I tried the most known brands like Tetra, NLS, Dainichi, Sera and etc. All they are doing is to take the food into their mouths and to spit it in seconds. I never had the good chance of watching any of my apistos eating with great appetite and resulting in a swollen belly. And this makes me disappointed very much. I tried to find some frozen foods in my vicinity but unfortunately this another barren sector here in Turkey. I was able to find an Ukranian brand called NEON. Anybody heard of it? Frozen bloodworms and Tetra Fresh Delica Bloodworms are the only types of food that my fish seem to swallow usually (not always). But I paid a high price for giving them frozen bloodworms every other day, since I think that the reason of the bloat for my passed away female was exactly those bloodworms. I even tried to make my own fish food alternatived at home. But the consistency of the resulting foods were never perfect and the fish had never shown expected interest in those either. So, I would be more than pleased if some of you who had overcome such feeding problems would share some of their experience with me. How can I make them love flake or granulated food and does anyone have other advices on alternative foods???

Thanks in advance and sorry for such a long first thread. But we will get used to each other all in quick time I hope

Take care

 

[Mike Wise]

Hi Orkun, welcome to the apisto forum. You will find many knowlegable and friendly people here.

Now to answer your questions. A 20 Liter tank is small for breeding, but it can be done. Success depends on many different factors: tank decoration, water values/quality, filtration, and food are the most important. I recommend that you use a thin layer of fine sand on the bottom of the tank. Apistos are 'sand sifters' and at times feed by picking up the sand in their mouth and sifting out fine food particles like Geophagus. Have more hiding places/caves than apistos. Also add a fine leaf plant like Java Moss. It is a source of micro-organisms for adult and baby fish. I do not know how you filter your tank, but I recommend sponge filters for small tanks. They even provide food for babies. Water should be slightly acid (<pH6.5) and moderately soft (dH < 10º; KH < 5º). You can breed A. agassizii in harder, more neutral water, but results are poor. Water quality is important, too. Try to make regular (1 every week) water changes. Good quality food is needed by both the adults and fry. Live food is the best. As you have seen, apistos do not eagerly eat dry foods. I mostly use live baby brine shrimp from eggs. Both adult and baby apistos eat it eagerly. If you have problems finding brine shrip eggs, then I suggest that you collect other live foods. Mosquito larvae are excellent for your fish (but not for you). Earthworms (baby or chopped adult worms) are a good source of protein and fats, but too much is bad for fish. Frozen bloodworms have a poor reputation here. Look for other frozen foods. As you have seen, dry foods are not relished by apistos. Pellet foods might not be eaten at once, but they are eaten by adults when soft, when sifting sand for food. Just be careful not to over-feed in a small tank. Once the female has eggs, it is best to remove the male. He has no other use in the breeding tank and only causes problems. Feeding the fry without live foods is difficult, but not impossible. The will eat micro-organisms in the plants and on sponge filters in the beginning. Fine dry foods is not the best food, but can get some fry to a size where they eat adult food.

Personally, I do not like the idea of crossing your Tefe redback with your A. agassizii. They are 2 different species. A. sp. Tefé and A. agassizii are both found in the Rio Tefé, but they are alopatric - never found together in one location. When A. sp. Tefé first came into the hobby, many breeders had problems breeding them. The spawns often were not fertile. Successful spawns were had small hatch rates, fry often did not survive more than a few weeks, and fry that did survive showed deformed scales on the body (typical for hybrid apistos). Most domestic fish were infertile. On the other hand, other breeders had few problems other than needing more extreme water values. We discovered that collectors were mixing A. sp. Tefé with A. agassizii from other location in the Rio Tefé. The females of both species are virtually impossible to separate. Breeders who were lucky and got A. sp. Tefé females were successful breeding the fish. Those that got A. agassizii females had problems. I think that you will have the same problems if you mix the 2 species.

I hope this helps,

... and congratulations on soon becomming a new father!

 

[orkunk]

Dear Mike;

Thank you very much for all these valuable information and your kind congratulations.

Just my feedbacks about your notes:

* fine sand necessity was something I noticed unfortunately after deciding to add apistos into my tank. At the beginning, apistos were not planned since they may be considered as a very rare kind of fish where I live, as I mentioned earlier. When I saw them in a local fish store, I couldn't keep myself from buying them by spending a significant amount of money However, my planted tank was on the run for more than a few months by that time, so it was harder to change the substrate. Maybe you are suggesting me to pour an extra layer of fine sand on the lava rock crumbles, but I don't think that will look aesthetic and it may also interfere with the rooting of some of my plants. What would you think? Maybe it is best for me to buy another small tank and decorate it according to the apistos from scratch, if only I could persuade my wife not to divorce

* I tried my chances with culturing some brine shrimps in the past. I tried Azoo and Sera brand brine shrimp eggs. I bought a simple plastic incubator which can be fitted on the inside glass wall of the tank. By this position, the temperature was able to be kept at ideal values. The results were not very encouraging. The number of unhatched eggs were always more than the nauplii. This made the successful separation of nauplii from the unpalatable eggs harder. But I will not give up since this "brine shrimp" creature is pronounced as the miracle food of aquariums nearly everywhere. I think I will order some eggs online from USA which are said to have high hatching guarentee.

* I am a little bit confused about your note that the females of Tefe and agassizii are very hard to distinguish from each other. This is because the female I lost was quite different from the agassizii female I am having now as the only female. I would like to add some photos, but unfortunately I did not took any before the loss. But I may try taking a photo of the male which I belive to be sp. Tefe. As I mentioned earlier, this identification was made by the fish store and I did not double check it. Very briefly, sp. Tefe female was greyish in general with orange linings at the fins and beautiful blue markings on the cheeks. On the other hand agassizii female is yellow in general with orange fins and it doesn't possess as clear markings on the cheeks as the previous one.

I will keep you posted about any progress I may achieve.

Thanks again. Take care.

 

[orkunk]

by the way: kH and pH

By the way, I want to ask another question to all. I am using reverse osmosis water for my tanks and the kH and GH readings of the water coming from the R/O unit are 0 (zero) according to Tetra kH/GH test kit. I only add 5 mL Seachem Fresh Trace for 80 L once weekly with the water changes. Apart from that the tank decoration has no decoration that would possess carbonates. (Can we count the lava rock crumbles as a carbonate source?)

Do you think this 5 mL Seachem Fresh Trace regimen is good for apistos. Or do I need to add something more to increase the kH and GH a little bit more.

 

[Mike Wise]

Orkun, I would not change the lava crumbles in your larger tank if the plants are doing well. I would use fine sand in the breeding tank - only if it does not have established plants or if you are not using an undergravel plate filter.

Another tank? That is very dangerous. I bought "another tank", then another and another and ... well I now have 35 tanks running plus extras. It is very addictive. My wife has not divorced me yet (37 years now). She knows I am with my fish, not in the coffee house "with the guys" (or gals)!:biggrin:

I do not use commercial brine shrimp hatcheries. I make hatcheries from 2 L soft drink bottles. Mine are made basically the same as on this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8sNx9zTOnQ. I make a lid from a third bottle (with a hole drilled in the middle for the rigid air tube). I do not use a light. I use a different mix of salts, too. I use 1/4 Epsom Salt (MgSO4) and 3/4 coarse Kosher salt (NaCl). I try to get the density of the salt water around 1.12. I suggest that you use the directions that come with your eggs. I definitely DO NOT use the YouTube shrimp collection method. It will introduce salt into your breeding tank! I simply remove the flexible air line from the air pump, let the egg shells rise to the top of the bottle, and siphon out the brine shrimp through the air line. I collect the shrimp in a brine shrimp net, dip the net with shrimp in fresh water to rinse off most of the salt water, and rinse the net with the shrimp into a jar of fresh water. I use a small syringe to feed the shrimp in the jar to the fish.

Your description of your Tefe female seems strange. This link shows a typical female Tefe: http://www.rva.ne.jp/zukan/apisto/ap_agassi_tefe.htm. I can see no difference from A. agassizii females, but the fish know. Prominent blue markings on the cheeks does not seem right for a female. You might have had a subdominant male.

 

[orkunk]

That photos gave me a great shock Mike. The male is exactly what I have in my tank now. So at least I can be sure that my male is of Tefe variant. However, the dead fish which I believed it to be a female was nothing like the yellow one (last photo in the link you've sent). On the other hand, I don't think it was a subdominant male either. If so, this is a great ambarresment reason for me, not being able to distinguish a female apisto from a male and waiting for the 2 males to breed in a tank for 2 months :biggrin: It was fairly smaller than the male and the the head/belly/finnage shapes were also very different. The only common thing at first glance was their bluish grey overall colour. Apart from that, the male was showing courtship behaviours. Yes, he was becomming aggressive from time to time, but I was able to notice some courtship moves also. Nevertheless, the female suspect has passed away and now I only have a female looking very similar to the one in the photo. Maybe she is a Tefe by chance, if they are so easy to mix. And this probability increases with the fact that both the agassizii and Tefe fish arrived in the local fish store in the same batch

Cheers