From: oleg@Veritas.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria
Subject: Re: (Apistos!)  Gee.....why am I killing so many fry?
Date: 14 Apr 92 10:21:53 GMT
Reply-To: oleg@veritas.com (Oleg Kiselev)
Organization: Palo Alto Killifish Loft
X-Disclaimer: I speak for myself only unless explicitly indicated otherwise

bowden@convex.csd.uwm.edu (John W. Bowden) writes:
>apistos: agassizi, steindachneri, hippolytae (possible ortmanni?),
>gibbiceps and sp "Rottpunkt."  I've even got a pair of
>nijsenni coming this week from CA.

Where the hell did you find A. nijsenni?!  I thought only Ron Harlan had 
those and he did not have many!

>I've got an RO unit and everything but I'm doing something drastically
>wrong.  I know that many killie keepers put methylene blue in
>with the eggs to prevent fungus is this common practice with apistos
>too? 

When I was spawning apistos I was putting so much MB in the water that
it was barely possible to see through it.  Also, their eggs are
sensitive to light, so I was keeping the hatching jar covered with a
thick brown paper bag until they were free-swimming.  I kept
temperature at ~85F and aerated the water strongly enough to cause the
wrigglers to be rippled by the current, but not strongly enough to
tumble the fry as they became free-swimming.

I did not use exceptionally soft water -- just LA tap cut 50/50 with RO
and some peat extract there to get pH down to 7.5.  The water was ~200
ppm TDS, at least 4 KH.  This was the water from the spawning tank, so
it was softened by the plants.

I used coconut 1/2 shells to spawn A. agassizi.  If I managed to notice
that one of the females turned yellow colour and was even more
aggressive than usual, it was a sign that she may be guiarding the
spawn.  A male and a female defending a shell together was a good
indication that they were *going* to spawn -- for whatever reason the
females I had would rather rip the male's jaw off than let him near the
eggs (that's how most of my males died).

When I found that the shell was plaseterd inside with eggs, I would
immediately get a 1 gal plastic jar, dip it in the tank, let it fill
with water, slide the shell into it sans the female, pull the whole
thing out without letting eggs be exposed to air (dunno why, but
Richard Sexton was insistant that it was important and he spawned these
fish before so I just followed his advice), then immediately dumped
lots of MB in the water, added gentle aeration, flipped the shell so
there would be some current over the eggs (in "real life" the female
fans the eggs now and then, so this was my attempt to duplicate it),
put in the smallest heater I had, threw in a thermometer and covered
the whole affair with a brown paper bag.  For the next few hours I
would watch the temperature and adjust the heater to keep it around
85-90F.

>I'm presently trying to artificially raise my eggs since
>my pairs seem to eat the spawns if i don't take them away.

You may want to try leaving the eggs in -- let the parents eventually learn 
what to do with them.  I have never risked that because my A. agassizi tended
to either eat the eggs, or murder each other, or both.  Usually the latter.

>Here are some concrete questions for people who have experiance
>raising apistos:
>What temperature regimen did you use?
>What hardness water?
>What pH water?

Answered above.

>What was your egg/fry survival rate?

80% egg survival rate, close to the same number from hatching to sexing
out.  THat was the 1st hatch I pulled out.  Then I tried letting the
fish raise the spawn and failed to get anything for a long time.
Eventually I spawned the F1 fish and got a much worse hatch, probably
because the water quality was not too great (that was before I learned
that nitrates matter -- A LOT).  I had tried getting another 3-4
batches to survive,  but the egg survival was poor (I am sure that was
because of the bad water chemistry) and eventually I lost the fish.

>What techniques did you use to artificially hatch/raise eggs?

As described above.  Once the wrigglers started swimming, I started
feeding them infusoria and a couple of days later baby brine shrimp.
About this time I also started doing partial water changes and stopped
shading the container.

Once they looked like fish instead of like little helicopters, I moved
them to a 2.5 gal tank with a tetra sponge filter seasoned in the
parents tank.

Two problems I had with them were:  1) the Sudden Fry Death Syndrom,
which is much like it is in killies -- who knows what's causing it?  It
can be just about anything and I am not about to medicate the whole
tank and damage the rest of the fry because one runt is biting it.

2) the damned fry would all crowd into the corner of the tank, pyling
up on top of each other , squishing each other against the glass.  I
have no idea what caused that behaviour and it eventually went away.  I
had seen other cichlid fry (Oscars) do the same thing and it's
unnerving and seems dangerous for the fry.  Tapping on the glass
elsewhere in the tank will lead the fry away from their chosen corner
for a moment, but then they all swarm right back into it...  Any idea
what's going on and how to stop it?
-- 
"... i heard the droning / in the shrine
	     of the sea-monkey / palace of the brine ..." -- Pixies.
Oleg Kiselev                                             oleg@veritas.com
VERITAS Software                           ...!{apple|uunet}!veritas!oleg
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria