You’ve seen them, you want them, and here’s what you need to know for success with these awesome little cichlids.
WORDS: NATHAN HILL
So, you’ve fallen in love with Apistogramma. I can’t blame you, they’re charming little fish with colour and personality in equal measure. But if you’re new to the hobby (or new to Apistogramma) it’s important to know that they’re not the kind of fish you can just sling into any old community and hope for the best.
That’s not to say that they’re hard to keep, but it does depend on the species. And there are a lot of them. Formally described species (those that have a valid scientific name) number around 90, but there are at least another hundred sat in the wings awaiting proper identification. It stands to reason some are easier to keep than others, and at the easiest-to-keep end of the spectrum reside the farmed, ‘domesticated’ species I’ll be focusing on here. Get a feel for Apistogramma basics and, should you fancy, you can start to get more complex with the delicate species later down the line.
What are they?
Apistos—that’s what we tend to call them—are small South American fish that belong to the cichlid family. That means they come with a few inherent cichlid traits.
First, they have some aggression about them. Depending on the particular species, that might be aggression between males, aggression between females, males being aggressive towards females, or females being aggressive to males. They are likely to take a dislike to certain other cichlids (something usually reciprocated), and if they’re looking to breed then they can be outright hostile to anything. Territories are important to spawning cichlids, and woe betide anything (including the fishkeeper’s hand) that invades it.
Second, they’re sexually dimorphic, which means it’s easy to tell males apart from females. With apistos, the giveaway is almost always the colour and markings, with males being the brighter and more flamboyant of the two, but it also extends to fins, with many males having obviously elongate dorsal (top) fins.
Third, they don’t scatter their eggs to the wind and hope for the best like many other fish do. Forming monogamous (sometimes with a harem) bonds, males and females club together to care for their offspring, creating some sort of nesting site onto which they can lay their eggs and rear their young. Parental duties can include cleaning their eggs with their mouths, fanning them with fins to give them oxygen, and in some cases, they may even provide shel
