Wild Caught Apistogramma Cacatuoides

[Biulu]

Congratulations! Do you know how many fry you have more or less?

 

[sarahberry]

Oh, I am jealous! I adore the cacatuides, and the tank looks great!

Glad some of them survived, and are making babies to boot!

 

[kribensis12]

Thank's guys! When I moved the tanks around and drained them they lost some of their looks, but all in the name for better water flow! There are probably 15-20 babies in this batch. I also believe they have now laid eggs. We will find out in a few days, yes?

Here are two pictures. The baby is on the top piece of slate. I'm sorry about the quality.

http/www.flickr.com/photos/68974782@N06/6836909787/

http/www.flickr.com/photos/68974782@N06/6836910427/

 

[CrazyAirborne]

i hate clicking photo links, so here!

 

[kribensis12]

Thank you. I'm very tech savvy, yet some of the simplest things such as this confuse me. I used to be able to post things from photobucket as IMG photos on here such as you just did. I can't seem to do it with flickr. How did you do it?

 

[kribensis12]

They did breed again! I can see about 20 or so little red "eggs"/wrigglers on a clay pot. The mother has turned very yellow again. The older batch of babies have seem to hit a growth spurt and are getting some pretty funky black blotches on them. I almost had a good clear picture of one but then it darted off (kinda shy).

 

[hawkdaddy]

congratulations! i always wanted to keep cacautoides, but never thought i'd do the best job for them! Tank looks great btw

 

[kribensis12]

congratulations! i always wanted to keep cacautoides, but never thought i'd do the best job for them! Tank looks great btw

Thank you! These WC ones might just be hardier, but they require no effort at all. I do weekly water changes/gravel vacums and feed them. That's it. I do add some Black water extract, but I'm not sure if they has done them any good or not. The college I am going to is ina small city that sits on a slab of limestone (I think it used to be the "Limestone capital of the world") so the pH is high (8.4) and the water is hard and they seem to do fine.

 

[Biulu]

Wow, great! And the fact that you have a high pH is very encouraging; I thought I would never be able to breed this type of fish!

 

[kribensis12]

I think it does have something to do with them being wild caught. They are more used to varied water conditions and they don't have the weak genes seen in tank bred versions.

 

[Biulu]

Well, weak genes is one thing, but on the other hand aquarium bred fish normally tolerate a wider range of water conditions than wild ones...

 

[kribensis12]

Well, weak genes is one thing, but on the other hand aquarium bred fish normally tolerate a wider range of water conditions than wild ones...

From what I've seen, tank bred Apistogramma's are kept in low pH tanks because the parents wouldn't breed in a higher pH. I tried to keep some orange flash in a 10g with very similar water conditions and they didn't do too well.

 

[kribensis12]

I have a video where you can ACTUALLY see the fry!

http/flic.kr/p/bx1Jgc



Here are the proud parents with the new batch of free-swimming fry. They may be a lot harder to see (they are under the female- LOOK VERY CLOSELY)

http/flic.kr/p/bx1Mg4

 

[Biulu]

Congratulations! Are they still with the mother or have they ventured off on their own? How many do you have? In the first vid I saw about 5.

 

[kribensis12]

They first batch is in a separate tank. The second batch is newly hatched and as you saw, still with the mother. There are probably like 20 1st batch babies