Window shopping at the local fish store one day last fall, I saw a few new mystery Apisto’s. These days more and more unlabeled dwarf cichlids seem to be coming in to the stores, usually as contaminants with other labeled species. This one (in particular caught my eye. It was a cute juvenile male, with big lips, a high dorsal fin with a red edge and tremendous separated fin rays (lappets). I knew he was from the cacatuoides complex, but which fish? A. gephyra? Maybe a wild cacatuoides? Letting him grow out provided the eventual answer, along with some identification of our photos by Uwe Romer: Apistogramma sp. "Breitbinden" (or "Broad band" in German). The only problem was that I had only the one male. I bought two other contaminants from the same tank at the fish store, but they turned out to be a different species.
The male was quite aggressive, beating up everyone else in the tank, flaunting and displaying his colors and finnage for all to see.
Finally, in a search for a female, we found someone on the Internet Apisto List with a female. The next problem became getting the fish from Chicago to Seattle. Here I lucked out. David Soares was speaking at their club two weeks before coming to Seattle. He kindly picked up a trio and brought them out. I added a very punk juvenile female to the 10 gallon planted tank with the male. At first she hid from his aggressive behavior, but soon she was displaying to him, and finally, chasing him away. They spawned within two weeks. Her color became gray-yellow at time of spawning, not nearly as yellow as other female apisto species. The yellow color intensified over the weeks.
The spawning tank was a 10 gallon tank heavily planted with Java fern, Bolbitis heudoloti, floating Frogbit, and Water Sprite. Temperature was around 78 degrees, pH in the 6’s. We ended up with around 30 fry. The male was removed immediately. Fry were raised on baby brine shrimp, but as juveniles have been also fed flake food, adult brine shrimp, Daphnia, and mosquito larvae. Because Apistogramma grow so slowly, they are still not adult size 7 months later!