spawned in hardwater

[uberape]

my wild cacas have spawned in hard water- ph 7.6, hardness 268 ppm. not a huge batch but I cant really see them at the moment. For me this makes a lot of the online profiles misleading.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

my wild cacas have spawned in hard water- ph 7.6, hardness 268 ppm. not a huge batch but I cant really see them at the moment. For me this makes a lot of the online profiles misleading.

I think a lot of it is misleading for A. cacatuoides. My suspicion is that it is just generic Apistogramma advice that gets copied from site to site. Your parameters actually aren't far different from the water in some of the collection sites.
In Linke and Staeck "American Cichlids 1: Dwarf Cichlids" it has water parameters for their collecting site of wild A. cacatuoides.

"...Location: Lagoon Aquajal, E. side of the Rio Ucayali, 10 km S of Chicosa, Peru.
pH: 7.6
Total hardness: 12 dH
Carbonate Hardness: 14 dH
Conductivity: 387 microS at 27oC
Temp.: 27oC..."

I sold some domestic "Double Red" juveniles to a local keeper and they subsequently spawned in our tap water which is pretty good quality, but straight from a limestone aquifer, 17dKH and about 650 microS,
<http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/apistogramma-cacatuoides-ro-water.10475/>.

cheers Darrel

 

[Mike Wise]

... online profiles misleading.

Do you take everything on line as true?? Any idiot can write something on line. If you had read Linke & Staeck, as Darrel did, you would know that A. cacatuoides - and many other apisto species that live in whitewater conditions - can live and breed at higher pH and hardness valudes. I always go with published information (books/periodicals) first. At least it has more editorial integrity behind the content.

 

[skoram]

They need to publish Kindle versions of these books. I'd love to purchase a copy but I don't want to pay $30 to ship 1 book to Korea ...

 

[Pickyswamp]

Iv had several times A cacatuoides and borellii fry at EC 600-800uS/m.

 

[uberape]

I did in fact go from Linke & Staeck, I have the book MIKE, but it was that source verses a multitude of opposite information. Everybody from store owners to breeders and every single online profile I read was opposite. It was the page by Martin and Tom which threw me into doubt http://apisto.sites.no/fish.aspx?fishIndexID=2404&gruppeID=1 the information out there is confusing thats all, I know that they can come from two different areas but I sort of get the impression that breeding in hardwater is an exception and they wont 'thrive'. I just wanted to say that my wild cacas spawned had a large brood and all is hunky dory.

 

[Mike Wise]

Maybe I'm biased because Tom is a good friend, but I find information on his site pretty accurate. Some of the others are, well ... sometimes make me cringe.

I think most people just accept that all apistos come from soft water and need it to successfully reproduce. Anyone who's seen my program on breeding apistos knows different. There are 300+ apisto species that come from many different biotopes with different water chemistry. It should be obvious that, although breeding is similar in all, water values needed will vary.