South American Cichlids • Biotodoma Cupido

[CjCichlid]

Informative thread and some great looking setups and fish!

everlast, new scape looks good. My only suggestion would be to add a black background.

[everlast]

Thanks for feedback guys, yes CJ I wish I had painted outside of tank black at the start.....my only way round about it now is to put something inside the tank and tbh its more hassle than its worth

All I wanna do now is relax, water changes, food and watch these guys grow into beautiful adult specimens

[everlast]

Oh a question for you guys.....Malaysian Trumpet snails query.
I had some in my tank from a few months back but I am convinced the biotodoma are indeed eating them because havent seen a single snail in months. I did drop one in from another tank so I could view there behaviour towards it and yeah they got a hold of it and started throwing it around, shaking it etc so ....yeah...Im unsure.
If I thought they did eat them I may add a few more but I dont want to get it wrong and end up with an epidemic

[CjCichlid]

No need to place anything IN the tank. Before I painted the back of my 135gal I used black felt cut to size and velcroed to the back of the tank. Worked great and is cheap and easy!

[RobertCupido]

Wow great job Peter, Looks twice as big now. Black sheets attached to the back would indeed create more depth in the tank. I'd put in more would, thicker one that's dividing the ground into fragments and creating trenches for the breeding. If you have two or three spots, that are surrounded a bit like a fortress, it's easier to defend. Also sooner or later, the cupidos are going to appreciate when the line of sight is interrupted so that they are not able to see each other constantly.

As Joe wrote, they like to get into the darker colored chilling mode (looks like sleeping color) and just hover in privacy when older.

More sand is always good - I'd go for around 7 to 8 cm. That height creates two layers. First 2 to 3 cm are getting stirred up regularly and there is going to be less and less oxygen the deeper it gets. Over time, the deeper layer is going to get packed tighter. The sand bed is acting like a filter. The first layer thats looser is working from ammonium to nitrate, second one that lacks oxygen is mineralized the nitrogen, consuming it's oxygen. In seawater this deep sand bed filter is deeper, for fresh water I guess 7 cm is quite enough. Snails (that small trumpets, that only come out at night) are doing a great job keeping the first sand layer in change.

Your angels might want some plants like big echinodorus. The cupidos might spawn in the dug out roots of those.

Nothing new from my cupidos, they seem very well and there is a lot of action but no spawning so far. I use the mean time to experiment to get rid of the particles in the water. I added an extra filter with cottage (that might have killed the fry somehow), it works serving crystal clear water for some days but then I have to clean it and there is a lot of dirt. Maybe be careful with the amount of leaves in the water Peter!

Happy New Year to you guys!

[everlast]

No need to place anything IN the tank. Before I painted the back of my 135gal I used black felt cut to size and velcroed to the back of the tank. Worked great and is cheap and easy!

Sorry Cj I never made it clear...the outside of the tank is already painted a dark red colour, what I meant to say was to change that I would either have to drain and move tank, repaint or put something IN the tank......my apologies for the confusion

Ah hey Robert...thanks for feedback...I take all you guys say on board...Ill get a video up soon, I bought my wife a new dslr camera for crimbo so some nice HD photo/video coming soon

[everlast]

Another shot of tank which shows a little more of the depth available to the fish now and managed to get all 8 in shot

[joemc]

very nice, the fish look really good, what is your feeding routine for them? also what are you feeding them?
(feeding question is for Robert and anyone else keeping these fish too)
on another note I just noticed that the thread has over 5000 views, that is amazing and to me shows there is plenty of interest in these little fish, now we need to get some of those viewers to start to make space in their tanks for these beauties!
joe

[everlast]

Definitely Joe

As for feeding I feed them 4-5 times a day.
I feed tetra prima maybe three times ....just a little , four pinches along the length of the tank to encourage natural sifting.
And twice a day I feed 3-4 cubes of frozen food.....(I feed artemia, daphnia,cyclops,mysis)

At night right before the fish go to sleep I throw in some algae wafers.........just a little extra to dissolve into the substrate during the night...also feed my big bn pleco

I do have 12 very large columbian tetra in there with em and a couple of big SAE but yeah, I do feel I feed too much sometimes but fish are thriving and there is no left over food but what do you reckon guys, am I over doing it??

I also have my temp at 27oC so that might be a factor on the amount my cupido eat.

My water change routine is 20% twice a week .....again probably could be more but seems to be working for me

[RobertCupido]

I'm throwing in like 12 cubes of mixed frozen food and from time to time I add dry food which I got in trade for young fish. Mainly it's Artemia, I heard that saltwater shrimp are housing less harmful microorganisms for fresh water fish. I also use white Moskito larves a lot, they indicate clean water. With blood worms I am more careful. From time to time I let the defrosted food (always dissolved under the tap to get rid of the added water, lot of po4 in) soak in a multivitamin juice from the drug store. I also got the feeling I'm throwing in to much Peter. My setup with the emerse plants is eating up all nutrition immediately. To not let the plants starve I have to deliver a more balanced diet. The frozen food, even watered, contains too much phosphorus which is left over once the plants used up all the nitrate. I'm very lazy with water changes and gotta keep the plants more happy (npk) with the diet for the fish than the latter themselves

I started to think about seasonal changes. In the Amazon area, most species we keep in aquariums don't have a regular diet. In dry season it's fruits, nuts, detritus - scientists almost solely found vegetarian food in fish, we consider carnivores. When the rain comes, metabolism drastically changes because the diet is switching over to mainly insects, Larven, small fish etc. So I considered at least varying the relation of plant food and frozen insects over a period of some month.

In the summer I only feed living insects and Larves. Now in winter the cupidos still hunt from time to time, the group of 7 shares the tank with thousands small caridinia. They're lazy though, the shrimp really has to move abruptly and be very close to get eaten. They're not chased with that much effort.

[everlast]

Talking of shrimp.......I was going to breed gamarrus shrimp in a little 40 litre tank I have to give the cupids live..moving prey.....what do u guys reckon?

[joemc]

go for it, I regularly feed mine cherry shrimp, they are a very easy shrimp to reproduce, once a colony gets going there is no stopping it, I just net out a couple of dozen and drop them into the tank the fish love them, when cleaning the tank or moving a rock I would often one some shoot out looking for cover only to be swallowed by a fast moving cupido. they will also devour small or chopped earthworms

[RobertCupido]

You can try to settle a population of caridinia in the tank and the filter! They reproduce very fast and if there are enough "dead corners" they will serve as a permanent contribution to the stability of the tank. Mine like to crave near the surface and on wood. At night they're all over the place.

[joemc]

off the top of my head here is what my fish are fed
staple diet.
Tetra prima ( also sold as Tetra diskus)
tetra crisps

Frozen foods
blood worm
mysis shrimp
lobster eggs
brine shrimp
discus mix
[b]live food[/b]
daphnia
glass worms
cherry shrimp
Cyclops
any random bug that comes in the sweep of the net from my pond or water containers outside

there may be more, but I cannot think of them at this minute

[everlast]

Hey all
Thought I would update things my side with a few photos of my group

I have added a few more bits of wood to the tank which makes it even better and have my little cherry shrimp tank up and running so shouldnt be too long before we have some live shrimp getting thrown in for the cupidos

Colours show better in the semi dark areas at the side and less so at the very front