Warmfish

My local fish shop has just started stocking my favourite dwarf ciclid, the Apistogramma cacatuoides.

I’d seen them arrive in the shop a few weeks ago. I left it till yesterday to purchase a male and female pair of the Double Red variety of Apistograma cacatuoides.

Figure 1 – the male Apistograma cacatuoides (double red) in my tank.

Figure 2- the male and female, the female has a green tint to her scales.

An excellent resource for these fish is dwarfciclid.com.

Martin

It seems the local fish shops stock pretty much every other Apistogramma variant, but quickly becoming my favourite fish, is the cacatuoides (Dwarf Cockatoo Cichlid) variety.

In seven weeks or so, I hope my tank will be mature enough to have a pair as the main feature fish.

 
Figure 1 – Apistogramma cacatuoides (Male) – picture from aquapage.cz

 
Figure 2 – Apistogramma cacatuoides (Female) – picture from Guitar Fish 

I’d quite like a male and female pair in order to see the complex behaviours, and to perhaps even breed some more! Unlike the full size Cichlids, these dwarf varieties are plant friendly and wont have re-landscaped your tank over night or have eaten all your live plants .

This months issue of Practical Fishkeeping Magazine (website currently down because some hackers did something naughty!) features an Amazon biotope, which is excellent by the way… however the point of me mentioning it is; they mail ordered their Cardinal Tetras (Paracheirodon axelrodi) from the Wildwoods Mail Order Tropical Fish Service. I’m going to ask my nearest and most trusted fish shop to see if they can get some in before I take the leap and order direct.

Martin