A. ortmanni (long)

["Tim Kastelle/Nancy Pachana" <diomedea@xtra.co.nz>]

Hello Everyone-

By way of introduction, my wife and I have been living in New Zealand for
2 1/2 years now. Nancy has been keeping fish since she was little and
I picked up the hobby after we started dating around 1990. In that time,
she has had a wide variety of fish in mostly community tanks and I have
concentrated on cichlids. All of my previous experience is with africans.

Earlier this year we decided that it was time to bite the bullet, and buy
a bunch of equipment that runs on 240 volts so that we could set up
our tanks again. In researching, we came to be quite taken with dwarf
cichlids and determined that we would try to make our show tank at
home a dwarf tank.

First problem: there are pretty much no dwarf cichlids at all in NZ, as
near as we can tell. In the half year that we have been combing over
every store within driving distance, we have seen A. caucatoides, A.
gibbiceps and M. ramirezi - both blue and gold. We've also heard that
A. agassizi exist here, but have never seen them. The rams that we have
found have all been decent looking, so after cycling the tank with Rummy-
nosed tetras (H. bleheri) we bought 4 gold rams, then a few months
later 5 blue rams. In that time, these were the only dwarf cichlids that
we had seen at our LFS. We had run across a few of the apistos, all
of which looked like mutants. The gene pool appears to be pretty darn
shallow over here.

So I was surprised on Friday to walk into the LFS and see some
dwarfs in a tank labeled "Ortmanni". After my shock wore off, I ran
home to read all I could about them, then went back on Saturday to
buy three.

They have both super- and sub-orbital stripes. The fish have a dark
lateral band that extends from the eye to the caudal fin. However, on
the two that aren't showing the dominant male coloring, the band is
fairly faint, so that the transversal bars are the most apparent marks
along the body. The caudal peduncle has a long mark  which has rounded
corners at the top and the bottom. It covers more than 2/3 of the cp,
but doesn't extend fully either (unlike the drawing in Linke and Staeck).
The caudal fin is rounded, with faint but visible black vertical bands.
The ventral fins are very long and pointed. The tips of the dorsal and
anal fins also pointed. They also have a very striking facial pattern, which
almost resembles that of discus.

So if you have read this far, here are my questions:

1.	Does this sound like A. ortmanni? What are the other options to
consider?

2.	If the are ortmanni, what are the odds of them showing up in
New Zealand?? (rhetorical)

3.	How do I sex them? The resources that I have at my disposal
(L & S, Richter and the internet) have pretty much nothing on this topic.
In the fish store, I used the characters for A. regani as the closest
proxy I could come up with. If this works, it appears as though there
was only 1 female out of 7 fish there, as only one had a rounded tip
to the anal fin.

4.	In our 40 gallon tank we now have 6 Rummy-nosed tetras, 8
rams and the 3 apistos. Based on the level of aggression that we have
had since putting the apistos in, I suspect that while our bioload is fine,
we may have too many cichlids in the tank. Does this seem to be the
case?

5.	Our total hardness is about 5 degrees, and the pH is about
6.8. Once the tank gets a little more settled, I intend to bring the pH
down some more. Any suggestions on water parameters?

6.	Any other suggestions in general?

They are absolutely beautiful fish. I hope that we are able to provide them
with good living conditions.

Thanks for the help.

-Tim




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