A. staecki; Ramshorn egg eaters?; Suspicion

["Maladorno, Dionigi" <DIONIGI.MALADORNO@roche.com>]

A little while ago I bought three pairs of Apistos, of which one was
clearly A. njesseni, one turned out to be A. maciliense (formerly a
subspecies of trifasciata, if I understand well) and the third was still
to small to say.
Now that those are bigger, I think they match pretty well the
characteristics of A. staecki (short lyrate tail with rows of spots,
rather slender body, small size, dark blotches on the back, around the
insertion of the dorsal fin). The only difference compared to the
picture on of the book by Linke and Staeck is that the first 1-2 rays of
the dorsal fin are black. If anybody has useful or interesting
information on this species, I would appreciate to hear it.
Also, they have already bred, in soft water, only moderately acidic and
sometimes neutral (recently pH has been creeping up in my tanks,
probably in consequence to changes in the tapwater). If anybody in the
north NJ area is interested in exchanges, drop me an e-mail in January,
to see how things are going.
Incidentally, they are in a small tank (2.5 gal., one third for the male
and the rest for the female, the filter and the heater. They seem quite
comfortable in such small space, since anyway they do not move much away
from their hiding spaces).

The A. maciliense are now at their second spawn. After their first one,
I separated the male behind a partition. The fry have been growing very
slowly (at least compared to A. cacatuoides or L. curviceps), and three
days ago I decided to move both parents to a 2.5 gal. Yesterday I saw
the typical female defensive/aggressive behavior, and in fact there were
eggs in the flowerpot. What surprised me was that of the 20 or so
ramshorn snails in the tank, about 15 were by the eggs (the poor female
was desperate!), and the size of the spawn was much smaller than last
time. I interpreted it as if the snails were having a good dinner, and
they promptly became a calcium-rich snack for my Discus (not that I feel
good killing snails, but I have no place to put them). Several eggs
survived, and now the female is watching them by herself (I moved the
male back behind the partition of the original tank). 

One suspicion on which I would like to hear some feedback. I wonder if
it is possible that if after spawning I keep the male and female
separate for too long (say, 6-8 weeks), often once back together it
takes a long time before the female lays eggs again. On the contrary, if
I separate them only for few weeks, the promptly spawn again once
re-united.  Is this possible?



Dionigi Maladorno
dionigi.maladorno@roche.com
This message presents personal opinions which are not necessarily those
of my employer.