Hi, I have come to this forum to educate myself on these wonderful dwarf cichlids. While I am new to apistogramma, I am not new to fish keeping. I am keeping quite an assortment of fish from guppies and endlers to discus and frontosa (not in the same tanks:biggrin.
Anyway, due to a friend, I will be the owner of 2 pairs of apistos. One pair my friend called Viejita and the other Trifasciata. Hopefully, I spelled those correctly.
I need to know as much accurate information about the two species as I can before my friend mails me these fish. I would ask my friend, but they had them in with large south american cichlids and I am pretty sure that is not the set up they should be in. So I offered to take them. I know little to nothing about apistos and what I have read googling is so conflicting. There seems to be so much information on other types, but not these. So please give me some help.
First, can these two types of apistos live in the same aquarium or do they need to be separate? I hope eventually they will breed. I have a 15 gal, 55 gal, and 75 gal empty at the moment. If they need to be separate, is the 15 large enough for a pair? I can rearrange other tanks for these guys to have their own 20 to 30 gal tank if necessary.
I have read they like planted tanks with lots of little single opening caves. Is this accurate? What type of caves? How big of an opening? Most of my tanks are planted low light low tech set ups, is this ok? Driftwood?
Do they normally live as pairs or harems? Some sites say one, some sites say the other.
Next, the water parameters for them. My ph runs about 7.8 and is moderately hard. It is stable and remains about the same over a week time span with out aging or using RO, etc. I do have discus and they do fine in my water so I am hoping apistos will as well. What temperature range?
I am sure there are many things I am forgetting to ask. So let me just say, anything you can tell me about these species, I would greatly appreciate. Normally I research and research any fish or invert I decide to keep, but saving these little fish from their current situation makes me have to learn about them rather quickly.
Again, thank you for all of your help.
Anyway, due to a friend, I will be the owner of 2 pairs of apistos. One pair my friend called Viejita and the other Trifasciata. Hopefully, I spelled those correctly.
I need to know as much accurate information about the two species as I can before my friend mails me these fish. I would ask my friend, but they had them in with large south american cichlids and I am pretty sure that is not the set up they should be in. So I offered to take them. I know little to nothing about apistos and what I have read googling is so conflicting. There seems to be so much information on other types, but not these. So please give me some help.
First, can these two types of apistos live in the same aquarium or do they need to be separate? I hope eventually they will breed. I have a 15 gal, 55 gal, and 75 gal empty at the moment. If they need to be separate, is the 15 large enough for a pair? I can rearrange other tanks for these guys to have their own 20 to 30 gal tank if necessary.
I have read they like planted tanks with lots of little single opening caves. Is this accurate? What type of caves? How big of an opening? Most of my tanks are planted low light low tech set ups, is this ok? Driftwood?
Do they normally live as pairs or harems? Some sites say one, some sites say the other.
Next, the water parameters for them. My ph runs about 7.8 and is moderately hard. It is stable and remains about the same over a week time span with out aging or using RO, etc. I do have discus and they do fine in my water so I am hoping apistos will as well. What temperature range?
I am sure there are many things I am forgetting to ask. So let me just say, anything you can tell me about these species, I would greatly appreciate. Normally I research and research any fish or invert I decide to keep, but saving these little fish from their current situation makes me have to learn about them rather quickly.
Again, thank you for all of your help.