Re: apisto life spans (D. filamentosus)

["samaroo" <samaroo@aracnet.net>]

Oops!,

in the interest of being concise my last post was too clipped and widely
misinterpreted.  To clarify, I too bought a group of very young, but not
quite fry D. filamentosus (after sitting with a set up tank for 8 months
waiting for their appearance in LFSs!!).  I did not breed them.

It was in Linke and Staeck (1994; 4th ed. translated) that I read of the
very slow growth rate in the fry of these oh so cool checkerboards.  In
light of the short life spans  previously posted in this thread I started to
worry that the fish that I have had for 11 months, and who were presumably
older than I thought according to L & S,  had just about had their run at
life after I had patiently waited for them to mature !!

This becomes relevant because I have not raised them out in extremely low GH
( between 2-3 degrees), and was waiting for them  to get some good size (and
not die) before going to something really soft in the hopes of breeding
them.  I think perhaps I am running out of time.  Your story was encouraging
Lisa, because in the interim I have been reading a lot about the breeding
requirements of this fish and was becoming quite discouraged based on what I
had read.

With regards to the " red ventral/anal fin mythology " the answer may lay in
the original population(s) of your fish.  In TFH, April 1996, Roland
Schreiber refers to an observation that females of the Rio Negro system
exhibit the red ventral/ anal fins after first spawn while females of the
Orinoco population retain their transparency.  The previously mentioned
Linke and Staeck confirm this in their book.  The males of these two
populations also show differences in their tail patterns.  Using the
pictures in L & S I think that my males are of Orinoco origin while my
females are representative of Rio Negro and maybe Orinoco (or prespawn R.
Negro).  Maybe your females (or males) are from different populations.

One last thing.  Does anyone know if there is a more recent edition of the
Linke and Staeck book that I refer to, preferably translated into English?

My apologies for the length of the preceding.

Andy
samaroo@aracnet.net
- -----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Wrischnik <wrisch@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
To: apisto@majordomo.pobox.com <apisto@majordomo.pobox.com>
Date: January 23, 1998 6:07 PM
Subject: Re: apisto life spans (D. filamentosus)


>I have a question regarding all the "red ventral/anal fin mythology"
>surrounding these fish. The female who spawned & raised fry was wild and
>already had red ventral and anal fins when I bought her. After a few months
>I knew she was spawning or at least thinking about it because her fins
>began to just blaze red (primarily the anal fin, actually). That's when I
>started paying attention and one morning found her guarding fry. Now I had
>heard that the fins turn red in response to spawning, but my new generation
>(including both my own fry and wild ones that I picked up rather small) is
>laying eggs right and left (although eating them after a day or two - I had
>14 of them in a 20gal breeder flat, so the density was probably too high)
>and I havn't seen the blazing red finnage. I'm now wondering if the color
>change doesn't occur until after brood care takes over for the first time,
>or if the color is more related to age than anything else. What did you
>see, Andy?
>
>Lisa
>
>
>
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