Re: [GSAS-Member] Kribs on the rampage

[Kathy Olson <kathy@thekrib.com>]

Hi Betty,

I have been playing around with Kribs (for about the last 13 years).

I agree Aequidens curviceps are beautiful and gently (by the way has 
anyone seen any recently.  Erik would KILL me if I got any more fish 
though).

However, I thought I would add some the kribs.  I got some wild caught 
fish from ACA 2007.  They did KILL almost everything in the 75 gallon tank 
when they spawned, even a great group of 10 angels.   They left a few 
tetra's.

The ironic thing is that their fry are spawning in a 45 gal right now and 
have left EVERYONE ELSE alone.  I have about 40 kribs in there, along with 
6 rainbows, and some pleco's.

I find that with different fish groupings, fish behavior is really 
different.

In this case the fish density put enough stress on the parents they just 
stacked out one corner of the tank/bog wood and defended it.  Less than 
1/4 tank.  They actually successfully raised fry.

When I wild collected a bunch of fish in the amazon I brought them back 
and isolated several of them in the same 45 gallon tank.  When I did this 
I saw some extraordinary breading behavior with apisto's.  The female took 
care of the fry and the male did an outer perimeter.  Minimal aggression 
between female and male, where when I just put them solo in a 20 gal to 
spawn there was a lot more aggression.  Again, I had a high density of 
fish in this tank.  It probably approximated wild conditions much closer 
as well.

I just love fish behavior.  Fun to watch.

Kathy


On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Betty Goetz wrote:

> Just another opinion on kribensis: We had a 55g planted tank at work with
> a breeding pair that killed anything and everything in the tank except a
> few loaches that ended up hiding 99.9% of the time.
>
> My favorite MELLOW cichlids that are easy to breed: Aequidens curviceps. I
> know they've been renamed (maybe multiple times since I learned the
> name)....but I'm too lazy to look up the new taxonomy. Same with Nannacara
> anomala, and various Crenicara spp. (checkerboard cichlids). All are dwarf
> and were pretty mellow for me but I didn't breed either of them. I did
> keep an Apistograma pair for awhile (less than a week) in a heavily
> planted 10 g tank but the female killed the male quickly (sigh). She lived
> for many years as an Endler's fry predator....I called her JAWS.
>
> I've kept all kinds of cichlids and currently vowed to stay away and learn
> about calmer more mellow fish since I'm restricting myself to tanks 29g or
> less in the house. But if I went back to the 'dark side'....it'd probably
> be with 'curviceps'.
>
> Betty Goetz
>
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