taming aggressive males to breed?

[chriscarnivorous]

I been having a apisto problem We bought a pair of Apisogramma papagei (aldigon II) the wernt cheap as my missus has expencive taste for fish! Anyway we put them in a 2ftx1x1ft breeding tank with limpopo susbtrarte plenty of leafs and stuff. a few caves., and 6 black neons as dither fish, hoping they would breed. After a few days the female was bright yellow and dark black markings (breeding colours). she was shimming and trying her best to get him in the cave he was just not interested at all and started to attack her, We thought well he must be gay... we need a new male. So we found a pair for sale at pier aquatics for nearly half the price we first paid so decided on getting another pair to make a trio with the new male. anyway we put the two females with the new male what is smaller than the first one, but now we are having the same problem with the new male he is stressing the females really bad.

Anyone ever had problems with males attacking females & know the best way around this?

 

[chriscarnivorous]

anyone?

 

[chriscarnivorous]

 

[regani]

it seems a fairly normal behavior, judging by the apisto species that I keep. at least for younger pairs. once they have raised a few broods they seem to mellow a bit.
just make sure that there is enough cover for the fish to get away from each other and plants, driftwood etc to break line-of-sight and generate a number of different territories. I found that some floating pipes provide good hideouts and resting spots as well as the territories are along the bottom of the tank.
you will need all that cover once they start to breed when the roles of who is chasing whom get reversed, then it will be the male needing the hiding spots.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I haven't kept them, but I think they are quite aggressive. Also I don't think the tank is big enough for more than 1 female.

just make sure that there is enough cover for the fish to get away from each other and plants, driftwood etc to break line-of-sight and generate a number of different territories. I found that some floating pipes provide good hideouts and resting spots as well as the territories are along the bottom of the tank.
you will need all that cover once they start to breed when the roles of who is chasing whom get reversed, then it will be the male needing the hiding spots.

I think Regani has the answer, it is cover, you really need a lot of it. Have a look a this thread for pictures of the "floating pipe" in "Slimbolen's" set-ups, <http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/index.php?threads/10-gallon-apisto-setups.13178/#post-72676>.

cheers Darrel

 

[Mike Wise]

I agree with the above. A. sp. Papagei is surprisingly aggressive for a regani-group species and IMHO your tank is the minimum for a pair. I suggest that you remove the extra female for now and put a tank divider in the tank. Then put a breeding cave next to the divider. Put the male on one side and the female on the other. Once the male becomes interested in breeding, he will fertilize the eggs through the divider. This method has often been used for larger more aggressive cichlids, but works for apistos, too. Of course, I'm assuming that this is a breeding tank where the decoration is more for breeding than appearance.

 

[chriscarnivorous]

i posted this on apistogrammer group i got a response that there is too much of the males aggression focused on the females. i should keep them in a large tank with several other dwarf cichlids, geophagus and dither fish this will spread the aggression, Think ill give this a go the bloke who told me said hes been keepong a list of apisto for 25 years and been having this problem, only recently started doing this, he said keep the female in the breeding tank get the chmistry right, condition her so shes nice and chunky then add they male, they usually spawn with in 3 days, when they spawn remove the male forvthe female to rise the fry

 

[chriscarnivorous]

yeh the tank is not for show it is decor just for apistos, pretty much like the one in the other thread posted