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Species and sex id ?

dw1305

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Hi all,
Btw a lot of crypts require hard water so one has to be picky about which one goes into the aquarium
Most are all right in soft water, the ones from Sri Lanka are more likely to like harder water. I use mainly Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia and C x willisii.
The only plant you mentioned that i'm not familiar with growth rate is Ceratopteris thalictroides.
It has pretty plastic growth rate, if you feed it plenty it <"grows like wild fire">, but it will subsist on <"petrol fumes">.

cheers Darrel
 

anewbie

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1,788
Hi all,

Most are all right in soft water, the ones from Sri Lanka are more likely to like harder water. I use mainly Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia and C x willisii.

It has pretty plastic growth rate, if you feed it plenty it <"grows like wild fire">, but it will subsist on <"petrol fumes">.

cheers Darrel
That reminds me totally off topic but I thought crypt nurii (var rosen?) is suppose to do well in very soft water but none of the ones i've tried in blackwater will grow (i have 100s of them in my tap water aquarium so it is easy enough to pull one to try).
 

anewbie

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I didn't agree with everything that was said yesterday so i wanted to post the full image. As you can see the tank is not very bright - the only thing that changed between this picture and the previous picture is i added some pearl weed on the left top - when it gets adjusted to the new water chemistry i'll bring it lower and another leaf which i add on regular basis (tuesday was water change day). What i do think the aquarium needs is some higher structure as mentioned and some guppy grass to give a continous low area the fishes can hide. What happens is when i zoom in to take a picture of a fish or small region the camera adjust the brightness - when taking a full shot where the aquarium is 1/4 of the frame the brightness is closer to reality; though i keep the room dim so there is still some amplification.


This is the 2nd darkest aquarium i have - the other one being the one with the group of c. hastatus (which is a 20 long):
tt1.jpg
 

anewbie

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The frys with the female are definitely getting larger - the male i havent' seen in at least 5 weeks - the non-breeding female hangs near the front to get snacks. The breeding female seems to leave her along as long as she is in front of the drift wood. No clue where the male is - last i saw he was hiding under a leaf. I keep thinking maybe i should tear the tank up to see just what is in there but it seems like wasteful stress on the fish. This is the wolli - the ladisalo are always visible but show no sign of wanting to breed. They are in a 40B with a couple of swordtails. If i notice spawning activity i'll try to catch the swordtails again to take to the shop. They don't really like being caught - kind of hopeful they will jump out or into a net or something.

It always baffle me that in a tiny aquarium a fish can hide forever. probalby should have used a fish bowl for them.
 

anewbie

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Can i get confirmation that this second fish is a female. I'm 99% sure of it but is there any chance of it being a sneaker male?

wf3.jpg
wf2.jpg


In the 2nd image we see the breeding female on the right. They were flaring at each other. Also i'm trying to decide if it is critical if i remove this 2nd female or if she can be left in there. Most of the time the breeding female stays on her side of the drift wood and this one stays low so she doesnt' seem panicked but the two do fight. The 2nd one of course gets a lot more food because she greets me at feeding time and takes first pick. The third fish which i think is probably the male i've only seen a nose once in the past 6 weeks (that was yesterday) so i ahve no clue what it looks like or size. There could be a fourth fish in there but i have my doubts. The fifith fish came in with locked jaw and died a week later.

The breeding female has some frys which i believe are 4+ weeks old. I've only seen 2 in the past month but there could be more lower parts as i rarely see them. Very different with my a. sp Blutkehl where the fry show no fear of me and i have 20 to 50; of course the parents don't really care for me much and would prefer i not put my fingers in the aquarium when i feed the frys.
 

anewbie

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It now appears the elusive male i never see is breeding with both females as the one that was out and about is now nesting. She briefly showed a nose when she grab some food and then went back to a spot she was guarding on the left side. The other female who was brooding (they are now 5 or 6 weeks old so i think she has abandoned them) is hanging out on the left side..... hum... not the behavior i expected but whatever.
 

anewbie

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So i observed something quite amusing today; the male was under a leaf but it was badly decayed and translucent; when i fed the fishes the food fell onto the leave and he tried to eat it through the leaf; the 'brave' female then came out of the area she is guarding grab the food from the top of the leaf and returned.

Unfortunately most of the male body was still hidden under a 2nd leaf that partially overlapped the decay leaf; still it was amusing to watch him try to force the food through the decayed leaf. He is only marginally bigger than the females - maybe 1.25 x. What i don't know is if there is an active 2nd male somewhere in there - never saw a corpse so i guess it is possible. I haven't seen the frys in a while and unlike the a. sp Blutkehl frys they never did come out much so no clue if there is 0 or 1000 frys back there of around 6ish weeks age. Gotta rethink how i scape these aquariums. I'd at least like a good confirmation look at the male.
 

anewbie

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I should rename this thread - but i made some more observations - first it seems i have 4 a. wolli adults in there as i saw nose poking up while observing another elusive one. The other thing which kind of surprise me is i found a bunch of frys from previous spawns still alive (she spawned again over the weekend which is her third spawn). I still haven't seen a clear male (that is a fish with an orange tail); but i suppose there has to be one for all these frys. The other thing is i had expected this species to be more aggressive but they seem - at least when i watch them - pretty passive towards each other - they sort of know where to be and as long as they are where they are suppose to be aggression isn't too bad. The worse i saw was the two females (pictured above) locking lips which seems a bit odd for two females.
-
I do have two groups of a. ladialo - a group of 3 (1m 2f) with the IB in a 65; and a group of 6 in a ~ dedicated 40B (it has some legacy swordtails); while these fishes are much larger they haven't shown any desire to actually spawn and again they seem to mostly get along. I think the ones with the IB are near or did spawn - the interaction with the IB is amusing - the IB are much larger of course but also much more passive so the a. ladisalo are more likely to chase them off (territory) than the IB are to bother with them - at least when i watched them - with the IB I have two pairs and 2 extra males (i would like to remove the extra males but have not been able to catch them).

(IB is Ivanacara Bimaculata); the IBs also show little aggression to each other - rather they seem to be more signal oriented - when one female went into the other female territory (after food); she first got flared at and then a bit of tail wagged and then when she was still eating the male went up to her and she swam off without violence. Basically the la pair has taken a front left corner; one female ib has taken the back left corner (16 inch wide); and the other female has taken the back right corner and the entire rest seem to be shared territory. Of course if one of them were to actually breed and produce free swimming frys the situation might change.
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Back to the a. wolli one thing i can't figure out is one of the adult mostly sits on the substrate with ?his? fins errected - i'm not sure if it is injured or just trying to be unnoticed by the female with frys who is nearly next to it (approx sep is 3 inches); she did swim up to it but did not attack or chase it away and the older frys i found today also mostly ignore it. I couldn't get a look at it as there were a lot of plants next to the glass in front of it (i was trying to determine if the tail had a red outline). The other two adults one is the female i see frequently and pictured above on the left side and the third was in the middle back and i just saw a nose poke up; it never showed more than a nose and it could have been the one i found on the right side later but i'm not sure.

For reference on the right side in the picture of the tank above there is a sponge filter on the right in the back corner and this is where the female has her fry; just past the driftwood on the right is the other one i couldn't get a good look at that was sitting on the substrate; the female i see all the time on the left is about 6 to 12 inches in from the left side infront of the drift wood and the nose i saw was behhind the drift wood and in the middle where a leaf is showing in the picture. I didn't see much of it as it went back down quickly. Maybe it was an illusion.
 

anewbie

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Something really interesting happened today. As a recount i have for sure 2 females and 1 male possibly a 2nd male wolli in a 29 - well today i was feeding the brooding female bbs and turned and a noticed about 1/2 the frys had abandoned her and went to the 2nd female. The 2nd female wasn't really guarding them per sey but they were hanging out with her - so i gave them some bbs. also.
 
Last edited:

anewbie

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So - today the IB had a spawn that the female was guarding - they are still extremely passive to the a. ladislo but since the a. lineta i had ordered are not going to be delivered - i snag 1 female and 1 male and put them into the 29 i had setup for the a. lineta. - the 2nd female might be brooding but she is in the back under leaves and refuse to be caught.
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The interesting thing is throughout this period of months (4?) the IB remained very passive towards the smaller a. ladisalo and respected their territory or territory aggression. The IB themselves (I have 2 pairs in 48 inch aquarium with 2 extra males) have split the aquarium in 1/2 pretty much at the 24 inch mark - if one crosses that invisible line the other will approach and do a lot of tail wagging et all and eventually the 2nd one of the pair will come over if they don't move on. The ladisalo pretty much seemed to stay in the middle or mostly with the right side pair (the right side pair is now the one with wrigglers) and again they show little to no aggression towards the ladislo (though i just remove the male and 1 female so i won't get to see how it plays out longer term).
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The IB are also constantly switching from passive to ?aggressive? coloration with little clear indication of why most of the time. I wish i understood more about the IB native habitat to understand why they are so passive. Anyway hopefully the wrigglers will go free swimming soon.
 

anewbie

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My male wolli is broken. I can't quite figure out what is wrong with him - if you've had wolli before maybe you might recognize this behavior. Whenever a female comes over he lies on his side on the substrate. His stomach looks a little sunken the few times i've seen him swim but it is hard to tell for sure since i never really sees him out - just a few dashes across the aquarium. He is a little pale but does have some side marking (chances of getting a picture is near 0 unless i grab him and put him in a specimen container. He is not small at least 1.5 times larger than the female but complete passive. He is obviously functioning as a male (unless there is a 2nd one hidden in there some where) since every few weeks new frys show up. I'm hopeful the f1 frys will eventually get larger - but i never seen a male apisto lay on the side on the substrate in front of the female. At first i thought it was some kind of submissive behavior but i have no clue what is happening.
 

anewbie

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I've been keeping A. wolli for 12 years now but never seen this behavior except with passive males (unusual) meeting a dominant female in grow-out tanks.
I've seen him do this with both females - i have no clue if he is actually bounded to either one. The smaller female has bred at least 3 times and i probably have 40+ frys int here - feeding them in early days is difficult because i don't see them very often but as they get larger i'm able to inject more food. The non-breeding female is always out and greets me and the frys of the breeding female have mostly migrated to her or her part of the aquarium. She does chase away the pencil fishes et all but not the frys.

--
Back to the male - i actually thought maybe he was injured or near death so when i put in a metal probe to prob him before i touched him he immediately stood up and bristled all his fins and then swam off.
 

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