Panduro breeding trick?

[raymond82]

I have a trio of panduro's in a 15 gallon tank (together with 4 N. Eques). I've been treating them really well lately (to the best of my knowledge) but I don't see any signs of courtship. One of the females is a lot bigger than the other and and has really bright colors and I was hoping she would spawn. Lately I saw some small bites in the dominant female's fins, which I guess come from the male cause the subordinate female avoids the dominant one. Apart from some small encounters I don't see much aggression and all three fish are usually in the front of the aquarium.

These are the water values:
conductivity: 150 µS
KH: 2
pH: 6.5
Temp: 26 degrees celsius.

The water values could probably still be a bit better, but from what I understood this is mainly important for development of the eggs and not so much for courtship behavior. This makes me think that maybe there's no matching pair.

Are there any tricks to make a non matching pair breed (other than adding alcohol to the water)? I was thinking something like removing the male for a while, or removing the dominant female to see if the subordinate female will mate with the male. Would this work?

Thanks!

 

[Mike Wise]

It is worth a try. A. panduro, like most other nijsseni-group species, tend to be more 'picky' about their mate than most other apistos. It appears that the dominant female isn't interested in breeding with your male.

 

[raymond82]

Thanks for the advice Mike, it took a while for me to respond, my apologies for this rudeness.

In the mean time I first put the three fish in a somewhat larger aquarium to see what effect that might have. Not much happened so a week ago I removed the dominant female and this morning I found the smaller female in a coconut and moving around frantically in front of it. The male was hovering around the coconut all the time, they both seemed to be quite nervous. The female is all the time in the cave now so I'm confident that they spawned!

I'm happy removing the dominant female had this effect, I had been waiting for quite a while for this species to spawn.

 

[raymond82]

It's been a while, but I'm still hoping these panduro's will some day breed. I removed the dominant female and not much later the subordinate female dissappeared into a cave (as described before) but she left the cave three days later with no fry. A couple of weeks later the same thing happened, again with no fry.

Three days ago they seemed to be up to something again and this time the female put eggs on the outside of the cage but she wasn't guarding them. The eggs looked dark red but were gone the next day.

Water values are:
pH: 6 (measured with drop test)
conductivity: 75 µs/cm

Would it be too early to conclude that this pair will not likely produce offspring?

Is there a chance that the other female, who before never showed interest in the male, will show interest now that she's been in a different tank for two months?

Thank you!

 

[Mike Wise]

Well, your water values seem OK to me. My water was softer, but others have been successful with values similar to yours. You might want to try changing females and see what happens.

 

[raymond82]

Thanks Mike, I think I'll try that. Part of me is thinking of expelling them to the community aquarium to free space for a new species of apisto's but I would feel bad for giving up on them. I'm gonna see what happens when I introduce the other female again.

 

[ButtNekkid]

Hi all,

Can adding dithers trigger a spawn? My Panduro pair just started spawning after I added a couple of Otocinclus and 7 Hemigrammus rhodostomus?
Previously the male showed no interest in other fishes ( 3 Otocinclus and 5 Carnegiella myersi).
After adding these new fishes in he started to chase everyone and atm he´s with her hookup under a piece of driftwood.

Does the amount of dithers have any meaning if they work as a trigger?

 

[Shane Puthuparambil]

Hi all,

Can adding dithers trigger a spawn? My Panduro pair just started spawning after I added a couple of Otocinclus and 7 Hemigrammus rhodostomus?
Previously the male showed no interest in other fishes ( 3 Otocinclus and 5 Carnegiella myersi).
After adding these new fishes in he started to chase everyone and atm he´s with her hookup under a piece of driftwood.

Does the amount of dithers have any meaning if they work as a trigger?

This seems improbable. Did you do a water change before adding the new fish?

 

[Drayden Farci]

This seems improbable. Did you do a water change before adding the new fish?

Lots of fish have a tendency to breed after an introduction to dithers. The theory goes that dithers give the pair/trio/etc. something to bond over in their mutual aggression towards them. By having to actually "defend" a space together, they grow a stronger bond and may lay eggs eventually. The only time I haven't used dithers when breeding was when I had Convicts (lol) and a pair of Jewels (species unknown) that were in a 55 with several larger cichlids - though you could say that the other cichlids acted as dithers in a way.

 

[Shane Puthuparambil]

Lots of fish have a tendency to breed after an introduction to dithers. The theory goes that dithers give the pair/trio/etc. something to bond over in their mutual aggression towards them. By having to actually "defend" a space together, they grow a stronger bond and may lay eggs eventually. The only time I haven't used dithers when breeding was when I had Convicts (lol) and a pair of Jewels (species unknown) that were in a 55 with several larger cichlids - though you could say that the other cichlids acted as dithers in a way.

I have not bred many cichlids other than Apistogramma cacuatoides, Apistogramma iniridae, Apistogramma sp. abacaxis. None of these fish were kept in a tank with dithers except for the abacaxis. In fact, I removed the dithers with them and they began to spawn more frequently. Dithers are commonly used to difuse aggression, and make the fish more active in their environment in a sense to feel "safe". Instead of the male panduro attacking the female, someone would place dithers so the male can chase another target. At least, this is my understanding. I had placed a few Nannostomus marginatus, the dwarf pencil, with the A. sp. abacaxis as I had heard that they were notoriously aggressive with each other.

As Mike had said earlier, nijsseni class apistos tend to be more picky. It could simply be that the addition of new fish induced a new type of shock and reinvigorated the spawning drive of the pair/trio.

I don't think that the introduction of dithers could truly have such a big impact that the fish would spawn... I feel like there was another source of influence. Many people proactively do a water change before introducing new fish, and I think that if ButtNekkid completed a water change, this would be the primary factor to induce spawning.

 

[ButtNekkid]

This seems improbable. Did you do a water change before adding the new fish?

Hi,

No I did not. I´m in the process of finding out whether my rainwater is safe to use.
The tank that has Panduros has a conductivity of 23µS and my regular peatwater is 40+ µS.
I´m trying to change water with peat filtered rainwater to this tank.

 

[ButtNekkid]

Stay away from my kids!

 

[Shane Puthuparambil]

Good to know! Maybe Drayden is right!

Those otos are the biggest threat to the eggs IMO. They have eaten numerous spawns of mine. Sneaky little guys! That female looks ready to take the challenge!

 

[Drayden Farci]

Just realized this is an immensely old thread...Watch out for necroposting!

Anyway, here's an article from Dr. Loiselle, an expert on all things cichlids. I've had the pleasure of speaking with him on numerous occasions, and it's always been very enlightening. http://www.cichlidae.com/article.php?id=42

He first introduces the idea of dither fish, then explains several of the advantages, one of them being increased rate of bond formation and a sort of "tag team" aggression, as I described originally. He even goes as far to say that the common technique of buying 5-10 juvenile cichlids and hoping for a pair to form, rather than buying a male-female and expecting a pair, is not that more options are available to choose a perfect mate, but rather the additional fish act as "targets", or dithers, for aggressive behaviors when they form over a shared space.

I never said dithers are solely there for breeding. The biggest reason in my opinion still remains to be the process of increasing the sense of security among the shy cichlids, allowing them to be viewed in aquaria - the main reason we keep them!

 

[ButtNekkid]

Hi,

Nice article! Thanks for the info!

 

[Mike Wise]

The idea of dithers enhancing bond formation is not quite applicable in most apistos. Most don't form pair bonds. Panduros seem to form bonds more than most species, however. Males defend their territory, which can include breeding territories of several females. Each female defends her own territory - often this includes against the male. The male may be the first line of defense, but each female defends her fry by herself - at least in most apistos.