Re: Husbandry of A. panduro

[Frauley/Elson <fraulels@minet.ca>]

IDMiamiBob@aol.com wrote:

> 
> IMHO, I would take out the other male, and watch closely to see which female
> becomes the dominant one.  These guys are really hard on conspecifics and
> won't survive with more than a pair per tank.  If you don't take out the
> "losers", you will end up with only one pair in the tank anyway.  

I think Bob has said something not often said in discussion about fish
behavior. Apistogramma females are tough. We tend to view the question
from the male perspective - with expressions like "harem spawning". My
experience of njisseni, panduro and some other species is the females
are intensely territorial, kill each other and will run at sub-dominant
males. Males are surely bigger, but in some species, it seems males deal
with males while females sort things out among themselves.
With pelvicachromis taeniatus Moliwe, I observed that females ran the
show. As soon as they showed their first sexual characteristics, they
began to fight, and to do each other in. I could not keep two adult
females in a 20 gallon for long. One of my aquarist friends noted his
extra  females got 'a mysterious bacterial infection'. I think they got
harassed to death. The males never displayed such a consistent level of
aggression.
With my agas, I've had up to four females in a tank with one male, all
spawning in the traditional harem set-up. They didn't fight like
njisseni-type apistos, but there was territorial sparring. Certainly,
there's no black and white rule, but if we paid more attention to the
behavior of female dwarf cichlids, I think we'd see a lot of the older
literature at least was looking through testosterone-tinted glasses.
Gary



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