What is proper temperature for a. sp Blutkehl ?

[anewbie]

When i look up the values of the water temperature of the named river (from tom's website) I'm finding temps from 82c to 87c; i've been keeping my pair at 79-80 so i'm a bit concern that maybe they should be a bit warmer. Hence this post. I can't seem to find any other reliable information on the species. Also do they have a winter season where i should lower the temp? This is the species in case there is question:

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The female picture is relatively new and male picture a bit older but he remains colourless. I've had them for approx 8 months but they came in as adults. The female to my knowledge has only bred twice though this brood is about 3 weeks old and is showing good progression.

 

[Apistoguy52]

I’d imagine they’re like many species…86-87 in the dry season highs, 69-73 rainy season monsoon lows, 78-79 avg.

 

[Mike Wise]

I hope you meant 82 - 87°F, not °C (= 180°+F). On the serious side, several years ago Dr. Römer published a paper on temperature preferences. In it he reported that dominant females chose breeding territories with the most ideal temperatures and relegated less dominant females to territories with less favorable water temperatures. Realize that water temperature will vary a few degrees with depth and location. What this means is that dominant females tend to produce equal numbers of fry of each sex, while females in cooler areas produce more females and females in warmer areas produce more males. The end result of all of this is that the area will produce equal numbers of each sex.

Your temperature seems to be the typical ideal for most apisto species (A. sp. Blutkehl has never been studied in a systematic manner) and you appear to be successful at that temperature. My philosophy: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (or as my family tells me too often, "Don't touch it, you'll break it!"

 

[MacZ]

I concur with Mike. Unless it's not a very southern species like A. borellii the average tropical temp of roundabout 25°C is really working for most species, species from the Equator should work fine with 1-2 degree more.

 

[anewbie]

Ok thanks. I wasn't too concern about the sexes of the brood as i was about the health of the adults (hence the question if they needed a winter season with lower temps BUT i also took in that they haven't been studied in detailed so i will leave the temp where it is - while colourless i really like this species behavior - well more so than my puppy dog species that expect the food to be dropped in their open mouths

 

[anewbie]

Updated pictures of f1 showing a wide variance in colour. While this group has so far proven very docile with regards to aggression between adults they don't really like to sit still and pose for images; note that the parents earlier in this thread have no visible colour on their face while some f1 are blue/green and others have a lot of red; i have at least one with blue green and red specks not pictured:

 

[anewbie]

Another one i had put in a 10 to grow out has a blue line sailed fin but no colouring on the face.

Not sure why - maybe the aquarium is too warm at 79 but i seem to be male heavy.

 

[anewbie]

This is the 55/60 where i keep these fishes if anyone want to suggest improvements; or comments. In general i'm finding this species very very docile with an occasional display between two males but otherwise not much else:

Above is full aquarium - on the right behind it you see the 65 which has the a. sp ipiranga; a most vicious species only suitable for one pair though it has 15 or so rapidly growing frys. the middle tank behind it is a 10 with a pair of rams and a few young a. sp bluketa; i'll probably eventually return them to the 55 - when i tore down the 20 my goal was to catch most of the frys but they outwitted me and buried themselves in the substrate. Smart fish stupid human.

close up of the right the fish in front i believe is a young male but he hasn't developed a lyre tail yet.

No clue about the fish above him maybe a female.

and this is the left side. I should probably reshoot the images and angle down from above to get a better view. Oh well maybe tomorrow.

This tank doesn't seem to develop a lot of tannins but i did add a dozen new leaves after today water change; the 29s are a lot darker not sure why this one seems to remain light; though when i do water changes the water is quite brown... oh well maybe it is an optical illusion or auto-white balance.

 

[anewbie]

Two more pictures - these are tank from the left side going inwards - the first one is front heavy the 2nd one is middle but as the plant density increases the vision is obstructed:

Kind of weird looking at the full image from the front the plant density sort of disappear but when taking pictures from the side it seems a lot stronger. Oh well not sure what to make of that.



The aquarium is approx 48x15 - what happened is when we did work on the home we had a slice from an unused slab so i had these long tables made unfortunately i was thinking 12 inch aquariums and really should have made them a few inches wider like maybe 84x18 instead of 84x16; oh well it'll be a long time before i need another slab.