These wild fish are not A. cacatuoides, or are they? Please help.

[Rio]

Not so long ago I bought a male and female wild Apistogramma cacatuoides from a good not so lfs for my "Quebrada Nauta (Rio Itaya)-biotope". The fish where so stressed in the shop that I just did not recognize them as A. cacatuoides and I walked right by them. After checking out the entire store I asked an employee where they kept the wildcaught A. cacatuoides and she lead me to a tank full of pale apisto's covered in black spots from the black spot disease/parasite. So they are definitely wild fish. She took her time to catch me a nice male that was comfortable enough to show some color and a female. Back home it turned out I probably got the least spotted fish in the entire tank as only very few black spots are visible. So I got lucky, or not, the spots make them look truely wild, so it would be fitting for a biotope tank.

Since my biotope tank is far from finished I put them in a 80 x 40 x 35 cm tank with 15 Hemigrammus hyanuary. They quickly colored up and showed what to me seemed normal cacatuoides colors. Once they started breeding something strange happend to the colors of the female, I am used to caca's having a stripe down the body when i breeding mode, but this female only shows a spot. So I really doubt they are real A. cacatuoides.

What I know so far, is that they are wild and the shop tells me they are from Peru. The first picture shows the female before breeding, the second and third while breeding.

the next two pictures are of the male.

and some picture of the babies the first picture is the sole survivour of the first nest, the second picture show some of the second nest.

Any help in identifying these fish would be very much appreciated. If more pics are needed let me know. I have some more and could always try to make some more. Although my camera is not the best, nor are my fish photography skills.

 

[Frank Hättich]

Your fish are either a form of A. cf. cacatuoides or A. juruensis. However, it seems that your male has a small orange spot near the upper edge of the caudal fin. If so, it's A. cf. cacatuoides. Do you have any information on the catch location?

 

[Rio]

Thanks for your answer.
There is indeed a small orange spot in the upper part of the caudal fin. So it should be A. cf. cacatuoides. Sadly I have nothing on catch location, just that they came from Peru. So that wont help much.

I presume there is still quite some work for sienctists on the taxonomy of these A. cacatuoides like fish.

Is it normal for some A. cf. cacatuoides females to show only a side spot when having young, like my female is?

 

[Frank Hättich]

So it should be A. cf. cacatuoides.

Yes.

I presume there is still quite some work for sienctists on the taxonomy of these A. cacatuoides like fish.

For sure and afaik the work hasn't even begun in case of A. cacatuoides.

Is it normal for some A. cf. cacatuoides females to show only a side spot when having young, like my female is?

That's one of the main reasons for the "cf.".

 

[Rio]

Good to know that I should not expect any beter answers than cf. from sience anytime soon.

Interesting that female breeding coloration is differing that way between such similar looking species/forms. Thanks for your answers and for sharing some of your knowledge with me!

 

[miguelgr7]

Looks like my cf. cacatuoides Rio Purus from brazil

 

[Mike Wise]

Looks like my cf. cacatuoides Rio Purus from brazil

Which resembles a cacatuoides form I collected near Leticia, Colombia. There are at least a dozen A. cf. cacatuoides forms that we recognize as distinct. We don't even know where Hoedemann's type specimen was collected. It certainly is not from Suriname as claimed in the original description! Without knowing where the original fish was collected it is only A. cf. cacatuoides with no collecting location.

 

[Rio]

Looks like my cf. cacatuoides Rio Purus from brazil

I saw these video's that looked quite, but not completely, the same as my fish:

Are these video's by any change yours?

 

[Rio]

Which resembles a cacatuoides form I collected near Leticia, Colombia. There are at least a dozen A. cf. cacatuoides forms that we recognize as distinct. We don't even know where Hoedemann's type specimen was collected. It certainly is not from Suriname as claimed in the original description! Without knowing where the original fish was collected it is only A. cf. cacatuoides with no collecting location.

Rio Purus and Letitcia are quite from eachother, interesting that similar looking fish exisit in both places. I will not add any collecting location to the name of my fish, way to uncertain to add that just based on looks. Still interesting to know where similar looking A. cf cacatuoides live.
They might not be te right looking type of A. cacatuoides for my Rio Itaya biotope, but I am happy to at least have wild caught A. cf. cacatuoides.

 

[Tom C]

In one of my expeditions in 2011, we visited the Río Itaya drainage (again):

From the road Iquitos-Nauta we had a looong and hot walk

It was extremely hot, and the vultures were watching us, hoping for a meal:

We tried our nets here:

pH: 6.02 . Conductivity: 29 µS/cm . Temperature: 26.7°C

and we found A. cacatuoides, both females:

and males

 

[Rio]

In one of my expeditions in 2011, we visited the Río Itaya drainage (again):

From the road Iquitos-Nauta we had a looong and hot walk

It was extremely hot, and the vultures were watching us, hoping for a meal:

We tried our nets here:

pH: 6.02 . Conductivity: 29 µS/cm . Temperature: 26.7°C

and we found A. cacatuoides, both females:

and males

Nice fish, hope to go there one time...

 

[Rio]

In one of my expeditions in 2011, we visited the Río Itaya drainage (again):

From the road Iquitos-Nauta we had a looong and hot walk

It was extremely hot, and the vultures were watching us, hoping for a meal:

We tried our nets here:

pH: 6.02 . Conductivity: 29 µS/cm . Temperature: 26.7°C

and we found A. cacatuoides, both females:

and males

Always nice to get first hand information about biotopes. Nice to see the pictures. Must be a lot of fun to see the home of our aquariumfish. Would be great if we could recreate biotopes like this, with many of the species that live in the same stream. Getting good information on which species live together and being able to get these species is not easy.