my setup

["Frank O'Carroll" <ocarroll@acm.org>]

Some people asked about my setup -

At the moment I only have five altispinosus, purchased at Christmas,
in a 60 litre tank with some rummy-noses and red phantoms. Difficult
to sex. One of them is getting beautiful extralong red tassels on its
caudal fin. Some of them seem to have a very short nub of an ovipositor
at the vent. I have 3 other 60 litre tanks but they are all empty now,
and a bunch of small plastic tanks for various purposes. I just age
(a few days), filter and preheat water for water changes, Tokyo water
is so soft, and aged water does not seem to need declorination. I feed
pellets and frozen bloodworms.

I have bred agassizii and cacatuoides, also kept eunotus and bitaeniata,
and apistogrammoides.  As I recall eunotus and bitaeniata spawned
but I had too many other fish.  All of those fish I collected in Peru
July/August of '95 and '96, and many of them were too small (for me)
to id at the time of capture. The apistogrammoides, despite having 5 or
six of them, may have all been females, they never did anything except
grow slowly, and I couln't find more in Tokyo. The last wild apisto I
collected in '96 died in January this 2002, a female bitaeniata - must
have been 5 1/2 years old. Fully adult (male) apistos are truly a sight
to behold. The male had died months earlier, bent-backed but still proud.

So I am fresh out of apistos, and want to go back this year and get
some more.

I only got into apistos by chance, they found their way into my nets.

I have also bred a couple of tetras, and white clouds. That's about it.
Other readers are far more accomplished.

I don't know about all the real apistos going to Japan, but Tokyo is
blessed with some excellent stores which stock a lot of varieties.

Frank


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