I purchased about a dozen young individuals of Apistogramma cacatuoides in the summer of 1994. They were just so beautiful! I think the A. cacatuoides
is actually the fish that got me interested in dwarf cichlids. I was so
impressed with their striking coloration. Even the females were so
colorful that I had never seen before in a small cichlid. The best part
about these cichlids was that they, like true dwarfs remain smaller,
the males reaching about three inches and the females about two inch in
size.
Because of their known temperament, I was not interested in larger, more aggressive cichlids. I had hoped that the A. cacatuoides
would not be as vicious as that of their larger and fearsome cousins.
Dwarfs, I was to find out, were a way to still keep colorful and
interesting cichlids, but at a much smaller and manageable size. After
having these pint-sized cichlids in my home for a month, I soon fell in
love with these tiny, precious jewels from Peru.
I decided to set the pair up in a 20-gallon
tank with a half inch layer of fine sand and a two inch clay flower pot
that I placed on its side. The pH was 7.2 and the hardness was 50 ppm.
I fed the pair newly hatched brine shrimp, live adult brine, and
sometimes ground flakes.
I really enjoyed watching this pair. The male
would 'flash' and spread his fins in front of the female while shaking
his body. To my dismay, I never actually witnessed a spawning. It seems
they would spawn in the very early hours of the day. The female would
turn a bright shade of yellow and develop three to fpir lateral stripes
along her side just below the mid body black stripe. These stripes are
a way of identifying the A. cacatuoides female.
My original male had a small amount of red
coloration in his tail. Even though he had little red coloration on his
fins, I still found his actions to be quite enticing. After subsequent
spawning, I started getting males with more and more red coloration in
their fins. By my understanding, this male is a "Triple Red" and this
means he is showing red in his dorsal, caudal, and anal fins. However,
some of the other male's were showing red color in only their caudal
and dorsal regions and was known as a "Double Red". There seems to be
so much color variation in the cacatuoides species that it is
interesting to grow out the fry to see just what the males are going to
look like. No two males have the exact markings.
Normally,
I take every other spawn from the pair and artificially hatch them
myself. Doing this, I usually get over 150 fry per spawn. Whereas, if I
left the clutch with the parents I would get about 50 sellable fry.
Leaving the fry in with the parents, I would soon notice the male
(father) attacking the young males when they were about one month in
age. Looking carefully, I did in fact notice small markings on the
young males. Obviously, the male wanted no competition in 'his' tank. I
also noticed that the female (mother) aggressively attacked her young
females when they were close to sexual maturity - sometimes as young as
a few months old! This experience taught me to remove the fry from the
parents at about one month old or younger.
In December 1995, Sacramento, CA. experienced a
terrible storm that left us without electric power for 63 hours. I did
what water changes I could to prevent fouling the water, and fed very
sparingly since there was no active filtration being run by my three
quarter horse power Gast air pump. After a couple of days I had a great
idea! Fish can handle being shipped for up to two to four days in bags.
I decided to bag all my fish including young fry and eggs. This was a
very strenuous job since I had ten 55-gallon tanks, forty 10-gallon
tanks, twelve 20-gallon tanks, four 30-gallon tanks, one 15-gallon
tank, and one 30-gallon tall tank! It took me most of the day to bag
everyone and float them in their respective aquariums to keep them the
same temperature as the tank water. (We still had the use of our gas
and I didn't heat the individual tanks, just the room so this helped a
lot.) I was fortunate that the electricity was restored on the third
day, as I lost 50% of my fry and all of my eggs. However, my breeders
and other adult fish all survived.
I moved in July of 1996 and still had four A. cacatuoides
breeding pairs. For awhile nothing happened, then one day in a
55-gallon grow out tank I found babies! There was only a #5 Hydro
Sponge® in the bare-bottomed aquarium which provided limited breeding
sites. "Where had they spawned?", I asked myself. After some intense
observations, my question was soon answered. I noticed the dominant
male swimming out of the bulkhead near the surface of the tank. I guess
that this was as close to a cave as they could find. The water
parameters were pH 7.2, hardness 7.8, and a temperature of 76° F. I
thought I would have to keep them in very soft water in order to get
them to spawn. They proved me wrong!
Later,
I sold my adults and was getting ready to sell the fry, who were now
mature enough to spawn, when I decided to keep tow pairs for myself. It
seems I was not ready to say "goodbye" to my little jewels just yet.
The two pairs, unfortunately, did not have the same personalities that
the original parents had. The original pair were fantastic parents and
got along well with each other. In hopes of recreating this attitude, I
had placed the two pairs in separate ten gallon tanks and patiently
waited for them to spawn. I was shocked to discover one of the females
had killed her selected mate while at the same time, the male of the
second pair his female.
I decided to place the "killers" together to
see if their personalities would 'cross each others out'. No. The
female quickly made fast work in destroying the male as well. I was so
disappointed that I sold the female at an upcoming fish club auction.
That was the last of my A. cacatuoides; but one day I will keep
them again. I have learned since then to place several young
individuals together and let them naturally pair off by themselves. I
would recommend this fish to anyone that has only room for a small
aquarium but still want something that will reproduce and take care of
their own eggs and fry. They also have such nifty personalities!