Nijsseni behavior

[raymond82]

Little over a week ago I removed all the cory's that I had with my Nijsseni's. Ever since, the female is doing her dances whenever the male passes by and she has been going in and out of the same cave all the time. The male is swimming around with beautiful colors, ranging from his normal blueish, to blue with vertical bands on his back, to almost gold. He seems to be very excited, swimming around frantically. Both of them show aggression from time to time to the pair of Colisa Chuna and the juvenile A. Lineatus that are also in the aquarium.

My guess would be that this is (pre) courtship behavior, however it's been going on for almost ten days and it doesn't seem to lead to anything. From what I understood courtship behavior takes much less time.

Can anyone tell me how to interpret this behavior?

Thank you!

 

[Mike Wise]

It seems more like bonding behavior than breeding behavior. Bonding can take a long time in these apistos if they are not entirely happy with their choice of mates. Sometimes they never bond. Actual pre-breeding behavior is very quick. It is also possible that they have spawned but the eggs were not viable for some reason. What are your water values (pH, dKH, µS/cm)?

 

[raymond82]

Thanks for your reply!

My initial thought was that they had already spawned, especially cause the female made a beautiful wall almost closing the entrance to her cave. But she spends very little time in there (although she goes in and out) and still seems to try to lure the male to the cave.

I bought this pair straight from the fish store, at the time I knew nothing about pair bonding in this species (and in the store they know even less). Usually, I hardly see the two spend time together, which I understood from an earlier question is what happens when bonding takes place. I hope I'm not unlucky with two fish that don't like each other, but I've seen them perform pre-breeding behavior before (doing their "dances" together, going in and out of a cave together or one after the other).

Also, I just tested the water and I got unpleasantly surprised: pH = 7, KH = 2-3, ppm TDS = 140. I thought I had it closer to their needs.

Seeing this behavior going on for some time now got my hopes up, but I guess I still have some work to do with the water.

 

[raymond82]

Here's a video of the kind of behavior I've been seeing lately. It's bad quality but hopefully just good enough.

 

[raymond82]

The previous video is actually a bit too bad so here's a (somewhat) better one:



This behavior goes on and on.

 

[Mike Wise]

Well, based on the last video, it looks like the female had spawned in the coconut shell. She seems to be trying to get the male farther away from the cave. She would really want him and his flashy colors not drawing attention to the spawning site - and actively driving the other fish away. My guess is that any eggs that were there didn't hatch. Until you get the pH <6 this is common.

 

[raymond82]

Thanks again, that's a very interesting explanation. I'll be putting more effort in lowering the pH, so far it has been fairly difficult. I understand now that Nijsseni's are black water fish and therefore need very soft and acidic water, but what values (pH,KH,ppm TDS) would be an absolute minimum for breeding success?

 

[raymond82]

Great news!!!

Today I wanted to change water and I noticed fry!! I think I counted around 10, I'm very excited since this is my first Apistogramma fry. At the moment we don't have too much live BBS but tomorrow we will, can I also feed them defrosted Rotifer in the mean time? Otherwise we have decapsulated BBS and powder food. And would it be necessary to remove the dwarf gourami's?

Mike, thank you very much for interpreting the behavior. I would never have guessed that the female was actually chasing the male away, I thought she was trying to lure him to the cave. It's great to be able to ask questions to real experts on apistogramma's, I'm looking forward to learning more from you in the future.

 

[Mike Wise]

Try the frozen rotifers for now. Hopefully the fry will find live food that's growing naturally in the aquarium.

 

[Tom C]

I collected A. nijsseni in October 2011. Just to give you an idea of what is natural for them:

The water: pH: 5,3 Conductivity: 5 (!) MicroSiemens/cm Temperature: 25,1 °C

They were living syntopic with hatchetfish, A. agassizii, Moenkhausia, Copeina and other small Characins.

I wish you good luck with the fry!

 

[raymond82]

These are beautiful pictures, I had already seen them cause I'm a regular visitor of the apisto.sites.no. The male in this picture and the other pictures on the website show a lot of different colors while mine is uniformly blue (except for when he's excited). Is this because mine are (inbred) aquarium strain? When looking at these wild caught fish, I think they might be one of the most beautiful apistogramma's I've seen (in pictures that is, I haven't seen that many in reality...)

Such low conductivity is really extreme, I guess that's close to the values found in pure RO water. The values in my aquarium are quite far from this, so I guess I got lucky. Of course having fry swimming around is just the beginning, now I have to see if I can raise them...

 

[raymond82]

Here's a picture of mum with the fry:

So far they're doing well!

 

[Tom C]

Beautiful!
Now: A small amount of BBS several times a day, if you want them to grow fast. (Mom loves BBS too).
Let's hope you don't have too many fry predators in the tank.....her extreme aggression potential helps her easily handle a few of them, but not too many at the same time.

 

[raymond82]

I've been feeding them BBS already, maybe a bit too much at the same time (after the last feeding they're bellies looked round and pink). From now on I'll give it multiple times a day in smaller dosages. Mom is eating a lot of BBS too, that's very nice to see.

As for the predators: there's only two Colisa Chuna's in the aquarium and I think she doesn't have much difficulty keeping them away. And the male is also helping to keep the Chuna's at a distance. I've even seen him taking a baby in his mouth and moving it somewhere else, he seems to be a pretty involved father...

 

[Racine Vice]

That female is one beautiful fish.

 

[Apistomaster]

The one pair of A. nissenji I had was wild caught and I have never seen any TR A. nissenji that came close to the color intensity of that pair. I think they were the prettiest Apistograma species I had ever seen.
I had a similar experience with A. panduro.
Unfortunately I never could get any fry even when I used RO water with the pH adjusted to 5.0.
Mine spawned a few times but they either ate their eggs by the next day or spoiled when I attempted artificially hatching techniques.
It is not unusual for even F1's to have less intense colors than their wild parents. Environmental and dietary factors have to be important if that much difference can occur between F1's and wild parents.
I noticed this first when I bred a wild pair of Blue/white A. agassizi. The wild fish were much bluer and had more shine than their still pretty but less intensely colored progeny.

 

[raymond82]

The female is indeed a very beautiful fish, the I like the male too but he's nothing like the wild caught fish that Tom C posted pictures of. It's interesting to know that already F1's are less colorful, I would have blamed inbreeding for less coloration but this cannot be the cause if it can already be seen in F1's. It would be interesting to know what environmental/dietary factors affect the coloration, but I guess this requires a scientifically setup inquiry.

The fry are still doing fine, I think I still count at least 10. I'm amazed at how fast they already are, they're also quite independent. I've had Krib fry before but they seemed to stay closer to the mother all the time. The male is also still involved, although the female gently pushes him away (she seems to take gentle bites at his side) whenever she thinks he comes too close. It's very entertaining!

 

[raymond82]

Hi,

The fry are still doing great, I think they're still around 10 and they grew to about 1 cm now (head to tail). I feed them BBS three times a day now and I'm amazed at how fast they grow. The mother seems to be caring less for them now, she still keeps the two dwarf gourami's in one corner but the fry is scattered around everywhere.

With the mother caring less intensively, should I remove the gourami's from the tank?
And is there any reason to remove the mother and the father?

Thank you!