A. Trifasciata Tank

[ZeeZ]

Well, here's my attempt at creating a 15 gallon breeding tank for my Apistogramma Trifasciatas. Unfortunately, the new female I had just gotten had clearly gotten sick of waiting for her tank to be ready for her and jumped out... I found her dried up on the floor this morning.

I got a two year old female A. Tri. this morning as well from another Apisto breeder. She's old. I doubt she can breed, but I'm going to try with her anyway. I have plans to get two more female A. Tris next month to add to this tank. So far the boss male from my 40G community tank has been hiding in this tank along with the older female. Anyway, here's the actual tank.

Setting it up. I used a mix of RO water, straight tap water, and aged tank water from my 40G to end up with a pH of around 6.6. I have Magnolia leaves as well as Black Willow leaves and two driftwoods and a mixture of clay pots to serve as caves. All edges of the pots were sanded smooth. I just got Indian Almond leaves, so I'll be adding those. The temperature is set at 83 to promote as even ratio of male-female fry if any happen.

The water is still cloudy in these photos from around a week, two weeks ago -

As of last night -

Any suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Josh]

I think it looks GREAT!

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
It looks fine, but you really need some more cover, smaller caves and a more complex environment. Personally I like plants, because they help with water quality, and break up line of sight. Additionally A. trifasciata often comes from vegetated habitats, if you have a search for images of the "Pantanal", you will see the sort of native habitat.

The other advantage of plants like Java Moss (Not S. American, but aquatic mosses will be present), the roots of floaters like Amazon Frogbit (Limnobium) or Water Lettuce (Pistia) and leaf surfaces of Amazon Swords (Echinodorus) etc is that they provide habitat for biofilm, and biolfilm development aids fry survival.
Moss is particularly good as it provides a large area of internal strands only available to the fry.

For caves 1/2 coconuts are good, you can cut a very small notch in the rim, this makes the female feel secure and the male doesn't need to be in the cave for fertilisation to occur. You can also super-glue (cyanoacrylate) moss, ferns etc to these.

If you haven't seen them have a look at ApistoBob's pages on habitat etc., they are very useful.#
<http://dwarfcichlid.com/Aquarium_care.php>, & <http://dwarfcichlid.com/Breeding_Blue_Rams.php>, you can see the moss with the Rams fry.

cheers Darrel