Apistogramma hongsloi "project"

[solasis]

Pair #2... really hoping she's a she.

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Pair #3's male (and his female behind him), he's colored up a lot since I got the pairs divided. Hopefully he continues to do so.

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Water changes with RO tonight to get TDS down. I'm in uncharted territory for me as I've never done anything like that with my water. TDS might still be a bit high. Got the RO going again and might do a bit more changing tomorrow to get them down a bit more. Ran out of RO on the bigger tank, which was expected.

These fish seem to love cold, RO water changes. My apistogramma allpahuayo is ready to spawn. I dropped TDS from 100 -> 50 and temp from 80 -> 70 and hoping for eggs in the morning. Female turned bright yellow indicating she is ready for lay.

[jwcarlson]

The one pair that's already spawned for me, the female is yellow every morning. I will probably do another change tonight with RO on them to drop them from about 120 down to the 50ish range TDS. I'd like to prove that they can breed period before I start seeing how hard they can go. I guess I should have taken a bit more water out last night, but that's OK. Hoping to pick up another bigger barrel on Friday so that I have more flexability with RO. Right now I just have a 32 gallon trash can and it's partially full, so I'm worried if I leave it on when I go to work for 10+ hours that I'll come back to it spilling "valuable" water on the floor.

I haven't set up my solenoids yet, when I do that I'll be able to turn the RO on/off from my phone (or automatically, once I know about how long I should leave it on the fill the barrrel mostly).

[jwcarlson]

Dropped TDS to 60 for the last few days. We were out late at a work dinner so I didn't get to observe last night. This morning I could not find the female, finally saw a little shadow in her cave. She finally came out, has been kind of keeping the male away. And has been darting back to the cave and immediately turning over looking at the top and spitting water towards the top.

Guess I will know soon if she starts tossing them out. Not sure how to know if the male did his job or not.

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[jwcarlson]

The kids have taken to calling her "Bee" because of her colors. I do not know what they're going to do if/when the other two females spawn and have the same coloration. But that will be for them to find out.
In any event, the last few days Bee has been keeping her male on his half of the tank. She's not being too rough on him, but does check to make sure he's not getting too close. In the picture above she had one egg spit out and I didn't notice it until a couple of days later. Yesterday afternoon she had spit 3-4 more out, watched her eat a couple of those.
When she zips back into the cave now she's going almost vertical and making a lot of spitting motions. I'm hoping that she is moving wigglers around. I did a really quick vac yesterday just to get some of the puddles of baby brine shrimp out of there.

Excited to see if she's got anything in there. I did notice that she's missing her right ventral fin. Hoping that's a battle injury (she didn't have it when she came from the supplier) and not a sign of inbreeding. Though I have read that fry can rub their ventral fins off sometimes because they slide around on substrate. Guess we'll see how her fry turn out if she makes any.

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[Second Hand Pat]

What a fun project Jacob, and with gorgeous fish. You will be swimming in fry in no time I bet
Pat

[jwcarlson]

What a fun project Jacob, and with gorgeous fish. You will be swimming in fry in no time I bet
Pat

Thanks, Pat!

She aborted this round again. Not exactly surprising. I've never bred any egg layers before so I don't really know what to expect, but know it can take multiple attempts, I really think she got to wigglers this time, though I never saw them. I think the water is OK. TDS is 80, KH 4, GH 3. It's just two attempts with me, so no clue if she's done it before. One of the other pairs looks like they might be semi-close to doing something. The other I would describe as... reluctant. lol

This was the scene last night for them... at least he's relatively gentle with her and isn't abusing her for not being particularly interested.

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[dagray]

I have a problem trying to keep Apistos... a female purchased months ago is healthy as a horse, but I think when I buy apistos they go into the pleco cave and get caught/beat up by the bristlenose plecos.

I have Altum Angels in the tank (silver dollar size bodies), tetras, and three male bristlenose plecos.

Any advice would be appreciated.

We do have hard water, my ph is 7.2, and I keep the tank at 80 degrees.

[Second Hand Pat]

Thanks, Pat!

She aborted this round again. Not exactly surprising. I've never bred any egg layers before so I don't really know what to expect, but know it can take multiple attempts, I really think she got to wigglers this time, though I never saw them. I think the water is OK. TDS is 80, KH 4, GH 3. It's just two attempts with me, so no clue if she's done it before. One of the other pairs looks like they might be semi-close to doing something. The other I would describe as... reluctant. lol

This was the scene last night for them... at least he's relatively gentle with her and isn't abusing her for not being particularly interested.

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Hi Jacob, the fry can be tiny and easy to miss. If mom is hanging in a particular spot look close. You water sounds fine. I bred Apistos and may have a thread on it. I can look if you like.
Pat

[jwcarlson]

Hi Jacob, the fry can be tiny and easy to miss. If mom is hanging in a particular spot look close. You water sounds fine. I bred Apistos and may have a thread on it. I can look if you like.
Pat

Here's a couple of your threads.
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...ramma-Breeding
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...-Agassizi-Pair

I'll read through them.

She ate them as best I could tell. I knew as soon as I got home from work and she was flirting with the male.
Seems like the sequence is - female not ready male ready as the default starting position.
* Male perusing female pretty well constantly, waving his tail at her and doing beds to show up.
* Female starts being yellow-er on/off for a few days, doesn't react as poorly to the male's advances.
* 'something' when she finally lays, which has happened only when I am not around for me so far. The first time I saw the male sitting "across" the front of the cave. I assume that she pursues him leading up to laying... hopefully I get to see it. This seems to happen really quickly at least for this one pair that I've had spawn.
* Once she's on eggs she keeps him away. Mine are 0/2 and both times I knew she didn't have eggs anymore because she was out flirting with the male hard, I'm sure he has whiplash when she goes from aggressively keeping him away from the cave to showing off and teasing him.

These other two pairs I've got... the one seems to be in "occasionally yellowish" phase for the last couple days. So I'm curious to see if she is preparing. She doesn't seem to be running away quite as hard when he comes to her. The other pair I would not be surprised if they never pair up. Which is a shame because I think they're both the nicest of the bunch that I got. I did finally see her in a cave this evening and the male came up and blasted a bunch of water at her from outside and she went shooting out after a few blasts.

Dave, I could imagine bristlenose and apistos wouldn't go well together in a lot of cases. I don't have anything else in the tanks with mine other than some pest snails.

[jwcarlson]

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These two appear to be making attempt #3. Or at least she seems to be... the behavior prior to her turning yellow and becoming a terrorist is remarkable and whiplash inducing. I'm not sure she's not getting so "excited" to get him to fertilize that she's not turning him off/scaring him away. But apistos have been breeding for millennia without me understanding what they're doing. So I'm sure they'll eventually work through it!

[jwcarlson]

This is one of the other pairs and they seem to be easing into a spawn. She was showing off her belly a lot leading up to the first video and I missed it. They seem lovey and she is returning his tail whaps. I have not notived this at all leading up to the other pair spawning. Will see if this leads to anything. They were hanging around each other this AM still. She has been calling under the sponge filter home so I moved that and put a cave there last night and he was trying to push her into it immediately.

Maybe eggs when I get home!

[Greg-Florida]

Fascinating. Good luck with the project, looking forward to watching the progress.

[jwcarlson]

I caught them spawning this afternoon! Watched them for about 20 minutes, she was taking multiple passes... watched him cram into the . I cleaned out some of the extra plants last night to RR the algae (new tank). Replanted them a few hours ago during their light siesta during the middle of the day. As part of that I cleared out the hornwort that was covering this cave. I didn't know it was a tiny hole. You can see him enter the little hole with her. I watched him do it at least three times. I think this answers my question about if he was "doing the deed".

The other pair (mentioned above) is still lovey-dovey, but has not spawned. This is the forth spawn from this pair since I got them.

[Greg-Florida]

Pretty interesting surveillance work there buddy! Thanks for posting!
I noticed you have the comments turned off on YT.
Keep up the good work.

[jwcarlson]

Thanks, Greg, comments are off by default for "made for kids". So I guess maybe I shouldn't select that option when I upload stuff. To be honest, I'm not too worried about getting a YouTube comment.

Well... like 20 minutes after this spawning event the female (we'll call her silly) fish relocated to a different cave and was making upside down passes in there and calling the male over. He, being probably a bit tired of cramming himself into a thumbsize hole alongside her for a half hour, hasn't seemed as interested. But he has gone in the cave a few times. He fits like a cork. I don't know what to make of these goofballs. I wish another pair would spawn so I can maybe see something a bit less fevered.