A. sp. Abacaxis/Wilhelmi - strange breeding behavior

[Mike Wise]

I just had the strangest thing happen for me. I have 2 tanks with A. sp. Abacaxis/Wilhelmi. In one tank the female was added about 1½ weeks ago. This tank already had a male Abacaxis & a female A. sp. Miuá. I partitioned off part of the tank for the Abacaxis female so that she could adjust to her new surroundings before introducing her to her tank mates. Last week I removed the partition. The MiuÂá female immediately attacked the Abacaxis female, but the male Abacaxis always swam between them, keeping them apart. That seemed promising to me.

Last Friday the female Abacaxis suddenly turned bright yellow & started driving the other 2 fish into a heavily planted part of the tank, but she almost never entered a cave. I wasn't sure if she spawned or not, but I she certainly wasn't fanning eggs by being out in the open all of the time.

Last Sunday, I discovered a female in my other tank that was guarding 50+ eggs. I immediately added a partition to separate her from her male & the other female Abacaxis in the tank. She remained a grayish-yellow color while staying in the breeding cave. Today the eggs hatched, but the female is not in the cave with the wigglers! Just like the female in the other tank, she has turned bright yellow and stays outside the breeding cave most of the time. In the other tank, my other female appeared with a swarm of over 50 tiny fry - almost as small as dwarf Laetacara fry. Right now I am feeding the fry with APR and newly hatched brine shrimp. It seems that they do not stay with the wigglers very much. Has anyone else seen such odd behavior in this species?

 

[Gamelle]

Hello Mike,

I have an experience quite close to yours, except that in my case, no egg has hatched at all :-(, after at least 5 spawns (every 10 days). The female has the choice between a coconut shell and a « home made » cave (shown in the photo below), she chose the smallest one, I suspect that the eggs are not oxygenated enough …. I will try to impose only a coconut shell for the next try… wait & see.

--
Stéphane

 

[Mike Wise]

My fish had water values of pH 5.01, 53 µS/cm @ 24.5ºC (I prefer to get more females than males in polygamous species). Eggs don't hatch if the water is too hard.

 

[Gamelle]

My fish had water values of pH 5.01, 53 µS/cm @ 24.5ºC (I prefer to get more females than males in polygamous species). Eggs don't hatch if the water is too hard.

The parameters here are : pH 5.15, 56 µS @ 28°C

I have only one pair.

 

[Genes]

Thats really interesting. Perhaps mine is showing similiar behaviour. I have only seen her herd the fries once and thats it.

Even now and then she seems to be breeding, yellow colouration, black dot on her body and appears extremely skittish and territorial but no fries seen. Perhaps she left the wrigglers to themselves too once the eggs hatched.

 

[Apistomaster]

Hi Mike,
Almost nothing that Apistos do surprises me. I have brilliantly yellow colored A. borelli females that stand guard inside a 1-1/2 in PVC pipe end cap diligently fanning and guarding the blackworms I put in the cup for escape free feeding. They are not touching the worms meant to be fed. They will only eat the worms in free fall. Other females are doing the same thing where worms have established themselves in the sand and are just extending their wiggling tails above the sand.
Larry W.

 

[Mike Wise]

This behavior has been reported for years in many books. It involves an overly strong maternal instinct. I was just surprised at the lack of brood care during the larval stage of life. Perhaps, being a lake apisto, A. sp. Abacaxis larvae don't need as much O2 at this stage. Once they become freeswimming, mom is an excellent brooder.