Please help Apisto species and sexing

[Kattato Garu]

Hi, I picked up 4 "Apisogramma sp." from the LFS 4 days ago, I think they're 'Blue Steel' and maybe 2/3rds grown (about 4.5 cm) - one is a distinct yellow with a lot of blue on the head, two are more or less grey and black and very hard to tell apart, and the last has been sick since release and lurks listlessly at the back of the tank. They're all in a densely vegetated 120 L (32 US Gal.) community tank with hatchets, cardinals, Ottos, and corys. I got reasonable pix of the 3 healthy ones, they've settled in and have been sizing each other up in dominance displays today - just now the 2 grey and black ones were displaying, went a pale yellow with almost no black markings - unfortunately I could not get a picture. Do I have 2 different sexes, and are they Blue Steel... or something else? Thanks for any tips.

 

[gerald]

They all seem to have rows of red spots in the tail. Can female steel-blues have that, or do females normally have unpatterned tails?

 

[Kattato Garu]

I don't see the red - but my red/green colour vision's a bit funny. However looking at the various posts on this species it seems that the strongest diagnostic would be the black leading edge on pectoral fins of mature females - suggesting that the yellow one's a female. The two less colourful fish have faint brown/grey leading edges, but these could get darker on maturity, and their dorsal spines are pretty similar across all three. But I thought that females were rare - so can I have had 3 females...?

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
With the usual disclaimer I think they are "Steel-Blue/"Blue-Steel" that the yellow fish(es) is/are definitely female.

Behaviour may give you some idea as well, the males are pretty aggressive to one another.

cheers Darrel

 

[Mike Wise]

Yes, they all look like A. sp. Steel-blue. IMHO they all look like young males. Females don't show much pattern in the caudal at all. Last question: why did you put these in a community tank without a quarantine period??? You now have 1 sick fish that could cause all kinds of problems with the other fish in the tank.

 

[Kattato Garu]

Thanks all - at least the sp. ID seems positive, hopefully the sex will become clear as they mature. So is the leading-edge of the pectoral a poor diagnostic then? And can males have a lot of yellow in them too? I'm a bit confused... my guesses were based on the sexing guide posted on dwarfcichlid.com by Darrel Watts (Is that you DW1305?), but spots on tail weren't mentioned.

Mike, re the quarantine issue - my long-established small "peaceful Amazon" tank had a disaster on Xmas morning - the thermostat in the heater malfunctioned overnight and water went up to 37-38C (thanks Santa) which suffocated most of the inhabitants (except the Hatchets, presumably they get more oxygen near the surface?). Anyway couldn't bear to see it near-empty so I restocked it with the same spp. I had before (those mentioned above) + the (new to me) Apistos, all from my LFS, the Goldfish Bowl in Oxford, which is usually very good on fish health. My guess is that they share a water system in the shop tanks (all in the same "small community fish" section), so pointless to quarantine them separately, but I'm keeping a close eye out for white spot and if the sick fish doesn't recover soon I will retrieve it and put it in a hospital tank. Do you think I should have restocked gradually? I've never had a tank wiped out like that before.

 

[Kattato Garu]

PS do you think 120L too small for 4 Blaukopf (of either sex?). As neither I or the LFS staff could sex them in the shop, idea was to get enough to have a decent chance of a pair, and take others back if there was too much aggression.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

dwarfcichlid.com by Darrel Watts (Is that you DW1305?), but spots on tail weren't mentioned.

Yes it is me. There is a bit of a disclaimer with the posting on ApistoBob's site, and that is that I hadn't actually seen a female when I wrote it (I thought I had, but they were all sneaker males).

I subsequently obtained a female (and I had no difficulty picking her out in the tank), and she coloured up typical Apistogramma female yellow. Unfortunately she also brought Camallanus worms with her through quarantine, and I ended up losing her and my male. Camallanus is a difficult one to quarantine for, because it can remain dormant at low levels in fish that are leanly fed, before numbers build up and problems become obvious when the fish receive more food.

Mike is nearly always right, so if he thinks they are all male they probably are. Have a look here for some definite female photos <Steel-Blue? any-one got ....>

cheers Darrel

 

[Kattato Garu]

I've never had Camallanus worm infestations before - they sound extremely nasty.

Am now pondering what to do with my surplus young males... will have to go back to LFS and see if I can find/pick out a female (looking for tail patternings mostly), if so I will try and pair her up and move the others to a new tank or swap them.

Thanks again both for your advice!

 

[Kattato Garu]

Unfortunately she also brought Camallanus worms with her through quarantine, and I ended up losing her and my male.

cheers Darrel

Darrel, your Camallanus worms got me worried... by this morning the sick fish was looking terminal so I gave it the coup de grace and did a quick autopsy under high magnification - turns out it had an colon impacted with a knobbly sausage of hard, granular gack the colour of earwax, about 3mm thick and 17mm long. Total, hopeless blockage, even if I had known what it was, I suspect no amount of fiddling with tiny syringes of castor oil would have shifted it. But no worms, at least.

 

[gerald]

Could that be Mycobacterium granulomas? I have never seen them cause intestinal blockage, but they can invade most organs, and "hard, granular gack the colour of earwax" sounds about right. Did the liver, kidney, and spleen have them too? That's where we most often see Myco granulomas. If those organs looked normal (smooth red-brown) then it's probably not Myco.

 

[Kattato Garu]

Could that be Mycobacterium granulomas? I have never seen them cause intestinal blockage, but they can invade most organs, and "hard, granular gack the colour of earwax" sounds about right. Did the liver, kidney, and spleen have them too? That's where we most often see Myco granulomas. If those organs looked normal (smooth red-brown) then it's probably not Myco.

Hi Gerald, I'm afraid I don't have enough experience to say what it was precisely, and I haven't preserved a sample! But the other organs esp liver did not have the same symptoms and seemed in good shape or at least uninfected. Suspect that it must have wolfed down some unexpanded granular food at some point, and gotten blocked up with it.