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.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.
... online profiles misleading.