Ivanacara Adoketa

[joopsg]

My current brood of Adoketa Fries at 5 wks old.
Watch "5wks old fries" on YouTube
5wks old fries:

 

[D 10]

Congratulations. How You currently have few offspring and sizes?

 

[joopsg]

Currently this is their second brood of eggs that hatched. First brood to reach this stage. Current head count should be approx. 40 pieces, size around 1+cm

 

[D 10]

Thank you, sir. Good luck...

 

[joemc]

they are a beautiful fish, at what size are they sexable, tks joe

 

[joopsg]

They are usually sex able when they reach 5cm to 6cm. However, they need to pair off naturally. Hence even you gotten a male and female, it doesn't mean they will live in harmony and spawn for you.

 

[joemc]

Hi all,
Although I believe there aren't any submerged plants in Ivanacara's natural habitat, and it won't be an aquascape, I think you can.

There are a number of plants that will grow at very low pH, hardness and nutrient levels. In fact some plants like Syngonanthus, Tonina, Eriocaulon and Brasenia are only really growable long term in "black water" conditions.

Anubias, most mosses, Ceratopteris, some Cryptocoryne spp., Java fern, Bolbitis heudelotii and Pistia are all "low light" plants that will survive and grow in very acidic, nutrient poor conditions <http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/i...inguishing-orinoco-and-rio-negro-types.15009/>.

These tanks are for Parosphromenus, but Ivanacara needs similar water conditions. <http://www.parosphromenus-project.org/en/prachtgurami-aquaristics/tanks.html>, and this is a Riparium style set-up in which Poecilocharax spawned <http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/joes-tank.16361/>.

cheers Darrel

while reading this thread i recognized a pic of a tank of mine from the past, miss that now

 

[joemc]

thank you joopsg for the quick reply, the ones i have seen listed for sale are marked as 3-4 cm, i will have to look for a group so

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

while reading this thread i recognized a pic of a tank of mine from the past, miss that now

What have you got now? I found your whole set-up (plants, tank, fish) inspirational. I've posted the link (and picture) it on lots of forums.

cheers Darrel

 

[joemc]

hi Darrel, i have not been keeping as many fish in the last couple of years, I have a lot less tanks these days, the fish i have concentrated on understanding most in recent years is the cupid cichlid, I just wanted to get to the bottom of all the stories mysteries etc! i still have a few morpho tetras knocking about some tanks, other than that it is cupido, chaca bankensis, sailfin tetras, pencil fish, a few cory / brochis species, a few apistos, african tetras and a few species of plecs and i have been crossing a couple of amazon sword species / varieties to entertain myself!
sorry for veering off the post topic!, i will correct it once i pick up a group of these fish myself!

 

[joopsg]

Fries at 6 weeks old.
Watch "6wks old Fries" on YouTube
6wks old Fries:

 

[Rico Suave]

my pair of ivanacara adoketa

 

[de nol]

maybe a bit off-topic but can you tell my what the visual differences are between the male and female besides size...

 

[Guesto]

Hi All,

May I ask the all the experts here, how can I encourage my adoketa to swim more or be more active? They do swim around at the bottom of the tank but most of the time stay on the substrate or hiding in the ceramic pot.
The only time they are super active is during their meal time.

currently they (a pair) are in 13gallon tank with ph5 - ph5.5


thanks!

 

[Mike Wise]

I think you will need a much larger aquarium with many hiding places. Floating plants help, too. If they feel secure and quickly able to find a nearby hiding place they will be out more often.

 

[Guesto]

I think you will need a much larger aquarium with many hiding places. Floating plants help, too. If they feel secure and quickly able to find a nearby hiding place they will be out more often.

Thanks Mike! I will try adding more plants!

 

[Apisto_student]

Hi All

I see that many of you have had lots of success breeding Ivanacar adoketa.

I have a pair of young F1 Ivanacara Adoketa which I bought at the beginning of December. They are in a 100l heavily planted tank by themselves. The tank is CO2 injected when the lights are on and has 2ml of Seachem flourish excel added automatically by a pump once a day. I use peat filtration and Catappa almond leaves to soften my tap water which is normally 6.9-7.2pH. Tank filter is 500l/h.

Water parameters:
ph 5.9 -6.2
KH 1-2 dH
GH 4 dH
Nitrates 25ppm
Ammonia and Nitrites 0ppm
27 Celsius

They are fed Vitalis south American cichlid pellets XS and Cichlid diet frozen food in the morning and evening respectively. I also feed them live Gammarus freshwater arthropods twice a week.

They seem very happy and have had 3 clutches of eggs since Christmas. However the female seems to gradually eat all the eggs before they have time to hatch. She is very attentive and constantly guards the eggs when not feeding and occasionally swaps with the male who guards them for a much smaller percentage of the time. In the first batch many of the eggs went white within 24 hours and I am fairly sure these eggs had not been fertilised by the male. In the second and third batch however almost all the eggs remained the colour in the photo below and only a few turned white. The female picks out the white eggs as they appear and eats them but leaves the rest unless they become dislodged by her activity and then she eats them as they fall to the gravel below. This goes on until there are non left. I don't think the white eggs have fungus growing on them as they don't become wool like.

I have a few questions:

Will the female continue to eat her eggs for every batch? Do the eggs look a strange colour for this species? I very experienced aquarists suggested they are very light in colour for the species. Both fish are not that large (the male is not more than 8cm long including caudal fin) so will they eventually grow out of this as they mature?

I have attached some photos of the eggs. One shows the white eggs I am referring to.

I don't really want to remove the eggs from the tank and was wondering if there are any tricks experienced breeders use to prevent this happening?

I would be really grateful for any advice!

 

[Mike Wise]

It's possible that your pH is too high, which causes the eggs to fail. Maybe you should lower the pH to 5 - 5.5 and see if there is any change. I must admit the eggs look too opaque. Maybe not fertilized. My adoketa's eggs were more translucent.

 

[Apisto_student]

Thanks for the reply!

I am going to run my CO2 on a pH controller and lower the pH to see if that makes a difference. With the water already having such low alkalinity already I don't think adding RO (if I owned a unit) would be a good idea as the CO2 might cause too big a pH swing.