Fwd: Re: A. nijsenni

["Ed Pon" <edpon@hotmail.com>]

>
>
>Wilfred Teiser wrote:
>
>> Hi apisto guys and gals,
>>
>> since a time I read more and more sentences like "I bought a youg 
pair of
>> apisto..., they were very small, about one ore one and a quart inch". 
When I
>> started my hobby - yeah, it is a time ago - it was usual that we 
bought in
>> minimum 5 or 6 pieces of an apisto (or other) type. So the fishes had 
a better
>> chance to find out partners by themself. Is this way not longer 
modern? Maybe
>> it is a little bit more expensive, but I think it is more successful, 
too. I
>> wonder what's your opinion.
>
Thomas wrote:
>
>buying 5, 6 or 10 apistos in a LFS is quite expensive thats true but 
makes sence.
>What do you do with the rest of the after you got your pair. I'm and 
most people
>on the list are hobbiests too. There is limited space for more fish 
because they
>very territorial especialy males.
>
>I usualy buy a pair if its sure it is a pair. In most cases it workes 
alright for
>me since 25 years.
>
>Thomas
>
I usually buy apistos in groups of at least six.  They are often 
difficult to sex at small sizes. It seems prudent if they are a 
difficult to get species-- and many of them are. I hate to have one die 
or to end up wiht two males or two females.  Another reason for buying 
them in groups is that if you manage to get another male or female 
before the originals get too old to breed, you may find that you have 
mixed fish from different locales.

The killifish people have found that fish that look almost identical are 
often different enough so they don't inter-breed.  We may learn more 
about our live-stock in the future where knowing the fish at least came 
from the same locale may make a difference.  An example is the captive 
cross-breeding of Orang-u-tangs from different locales was just 
discovered in the last two years--so a concern about mixing sub-species 
of an endangered species was discussed in the news.  Another example is 
the Red Devil.  It is now known that there are at least three different 
species of fish which were referred to as Red Devils in the past and 
that domestic stocks may be hybrids of these three species.

Has anybody noticed that the catfish hobby has an influx of so many new 
and undescribed species that they are being shipped in with a number (I 
bought something called a Peckolita Brevis L160) and a name?  The 
Killifish people are also keeping ttack of killies by some kind of key 
based on (I think) the collection trip and the locale.  It's not too 
hard to imagine the apisto hobby going that route as the bewildering 
assortment of names for undescribed species and subspecies grows.  There 
was a suggestion that this should be done in an earlier posting on this 
list.  

______________________________________________________