Apistogramma cacatuoides male aggression

[MitchNichols]

Hi is it normal for my apistogramma cacatuoides male to thrash around a little and warn off other fish? Whats the reasoning behind it?

Cheers

 

[Mike Wise]

Apistos are a typical cichlid. They are territorial by nature. In a tank with few/no territorial boundaries (like your 90 L) the dominant cichlid will consider the entire tank as its territory.

 

[peterclarke666]

heya mitch if you'd like to chat on apistos im only down the road from u in chesterfield and have a 22 tank fish room devoted to apistos, or have a read up of my apisto feature in febuarys issue of practical fish keeping magazine, but to start with the male will claim his territory as will the female, looking for somewhere to eventually spawn, cacatuoides are my favorite apisto

 

[MitchNichols]

How can I make it more cichlid friendly? Can you give some ideas please ? And peter that would be amazing if you dont mind! I shall pm you. And yeh there immence fish

 

[peterclarke666]

well from having seen your pics from another post id prob loose the stones, shells etc in the tank as will raise ph, tds and gh and kh but as per rest of your setup i cant see much of it to say but this is one of my setups

 

[MitchNichols]

They look absolutely amazing, please tell me your secret so making them!

 

[peterclarke666]

all can be done in time, just having the right wood etc, lower lighting can be done from floating plants like in mine , few leaves etc

 

[regani]

There are some pictures of the setups I use in this thread
http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/threads/10-gallon-apisto-setups.13178/#post-71362
The pictures of the individual tanks are taken from the narrow side, but I think you can see enough to get some ideas

 

[Dano1311]

Hi is it normal for my apistogramma cacatuoides male to thrash around a little and warn off other fish? Whats the reasoning behind it?

Cheers

Just keep and eye on them mitch, as i ahd male aggression which resulted in the femlae loosing all of her dorsal fin (which has since grown back) and the male loosing some of his lovely red finnage, which has grown back but normal clear none coloured i ended up having to take the male out for a week or so to give her time to rest/recover.

Im only down road from pete to so if you ever need owt Apisto related and pete by chance hasnt got it to help you, let me know and i see if i can help

 

[MitchNichols]

Sounds a plan cheers!