Trying to sex Apistos

[Jecaraven]

I’ve had this pair of apistogramma cacatuoides for a couple months And I’m starting to doubt my assessment of their gender. I got them from Petco and they sell them as assorted. I assumed that the one with all of the orange and black was male and the pale one with the black ventral fins was female. They occasionally do this funny tail slap at each other but otherwise haven’t engaged in any spawning behavior. Is my male possibly a female or just immature? The “male” is 1.75” and the female is 1.25”. What do you think?

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

The one with the orange and black tail is definitely a male. The other one could be female or a young male (they both look the same until the males colour up). Females normally have a rounded tail, whereas the males have a straight edge to the tail.

----------------------
How often do you feed them?
If you are trying to grow or breed fish, you need to feed them 3-5 times per day with a variety of live, frozen (but defrosted) and dry foods. Live and frozen is best for conditioning fish for breeding.

Do 50-75% water changes and gravel clean the substrate each day to simulate rain and to keep the water clean after feeding lots of food. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Keep the temperature between 26-28C (78-82F).

Make sure they have a cave to spawn in.

 

[Jecaraven]

I have been feeding them a variety of dry foods(NLS, bugbites, omega one) with a weekly meal of frozen blood worms as I’ve heard conflicting stories about them. Live food is almost impossible where I live and I’m trying to get my hands on another daphnia culture. They do enjoy smashed bladder snails though. I I do feed them 3-5 times a day depending on what I feed them last. I’m thinking on dropping female guppy in for them to hunt fry.

I waterchange twice weekly so my plants can do a little work too.

They have a chunk of Malaysian driftwood with cave spaces in in and a tiny terra-cotta pot that they realy seem to like. I just put the pot in yesterday and they individually like checking it out. The male likes to check out the roof of the pot periodically and the female just likes going inside and looking outwards.

The tank is at 76-78F on average.

 

[Colin_T]

I’m thinking on dropping female guppy in for them to hunt fry.

Don't do that. You will most likely introduce a disease into the tank with the guppy and cause problems.

Get a micro worm and grindal worm culture. Get some brineshrimp eggs and hatch them out and feed the fish newly hatched brineshrimp. Daphnia is good if you can get a culture going.

One of the best frozen foods is raw or cooked prawn/ shrimp. You keep them in the freezer and take one out. Remove the head shell and gut (long thin black bit) and throw these bits away. Then use a pr of scissors to cut the remaining tail into little bite size pieces. Offer 1 or 2 bits at a time and let the fish eat as much as they can, then remove uneaten food.

Frozen bloodworms can be fed every couple of days. You can also get frozen brineshrimp, daphnia mysis shrimp and marine mix (contains prawn, fish, squid and sometimes spinach).

The following link has information about culturing live foods for baby fish but also has info on culturing daphnia and rotifers.
http://www.fishforums.net/threads/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish.448304/