Re: Difficult females

[Mike & Diane Wise <apistowise@fgn.net>]

Tomoko,

Your female aggie seems to have a very high brooding instinct. Many apisto
species will 'brood' their food. A. borellii are especially well known for
this.

Your female should make an exceptional mother, but she appears to have claimed
the entire tank as her own. Any other apisto, male or female, will probably
find the same fate as the previous males. You need to get her away from her own
territory. I'd suggest setting up a breeding tank, one that is set up
differently for the one your female is now in. You could just re-decorate the
tank she is in but you will have to put her somewhere else for about a week.
Put a new male in the tank a week before adding the female. This gives him time
to claim the tank as his territory. If the female is ready to spawn, then
everything should be OK. Once she spawns take the male out of the tank before
she decides to trash him. This is opposite of what I do with normal females,
but yours is highly territorial.

Good luck,

Mike Wise

BTW I missed you not being at the ACA. So did Yamazaki's book :-(

Tomoko Schum wrote:

> Hi Jerry,
>
> >What kind of live food are they guarding?
>
> Some of my females guard daphnia and grindal worms.
> When I feed my new apistos with larger daphnia like D.
> magna for the first time, both male and female start
> cleaning daphnia in their mouth just like they do
> babies.  It's really funny to watch.  But once a female
> gets into this mode of guarding food and chasing her
> partner away, it is not easy to coax her out of it.
>
> As for my aggie, the lyretail male is her second
> victim.  After the painful initiation of tail biting I
> can't blame my male aggie for avoiding his feisty
> partner.  I just replaced 25% of their tank water with
> DI water tonight.  We'll see if this makes any
> difference.
>
> Tomoko
>
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