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Reported Outbreak of MTS & L. dorsigerus spawn

2818 Views 13 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  DeadFishFloating, 
DeadFishFloating
3
G'day guys,

I've got a couple of weeks off work for some stay at home R&R. (Actually supposed to be cleaning the place up a bit etc, before I get transfered for work). So far I've managed to clean the garage up as a temporary tank room. :lol:


Any way I've bought two new 3'x18"x18" tanks to set up two SA dwarf cichlid tanks.
One for my pair of Laetacara dorsigerus and trio of Apistogramma borelii, and another for my pair of Laetacara curviceps and a trio of Dicrossus filamentosus. I've had to juggle my original stocking lists to suite what is available down here.


Today I did a LFS crawl to pick up some more stuff for the two tanks. While I was at one LFS I spotted a tank with several female D. filamentosus, so I picked up 3 to go with my current male who is sharing a 35 gallon tall tank with the pair of L. dorsigerus.

Got home, and decided I'd move the male filamentosus to my large community tank and add the females as well. The large community tank is currently acting as a holding tank for most of the fish I plan on stocking into smaller tanks.


Well I couldn't find the male filamentosus in the 35 gallon tank. I looked and looked, and finally spotted him cowering up in one back corner behind a filter pump. The reason, the dorsigerus pair had a pit full of wigglers. :D I knew they were getting ready to breed, but I totally missed the eggs. :oops: I'll try for some photos of the spawn tomorrow, as all I can see at the moment is a little grey wiggling mass. :roll: Except the female just moved the spawn to a pit in the middle of the most densly planted area.
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DeadFishFloating
G'day dwarfpike,

I don't have any pictures of my Curviceps or Dorsigerus in non breeding colours. I actually really didn't want to unveil my Dorsigerus untill I had thier new tank atleast partially setup. But they decided to go ahead breed and I had to share the news.

They are down to about 20 fry on day 3 of the fry becoming free swimming. They follow the fry around just trying to protect them without really controlling where the little swarm goes.

I tried taking pictures on Saturday of my pair of Dorsigerus guarding thier fry. They're giving the rummynose ****. Anyway the batteries in the camera died on photo 3. :roll:

So when I went out to pick up the last of the stuff for my new tanks, I picked up some new batteries. But for some #@*!ing reason the batteries are just a little smaller than normal AA batteries. So I can't down load the couple of pictures I took of the parents.

And the weather here is [email protected] at the moment, a tropical low hitting the coast at the beginning of winter. It's been pelting rain for 2 days now, keeping us indoors, and putting a halt on me setting up the two new tanks.
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DeadFishFloating
Unfortunately the parents started eating the fry yesterday afternoon, all gone today.

This weekend I'll setup my new tanks up and convert the current Dorsigerus tank into a fry tank, and siphon fry off once they become free swimming.

Oh and I'll get new batteries for my camera tomorrow, while out.
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DeadFishFloating
dwarfpike said:
*tries to think of a way for this not to sound uppity, cause isn't meant that way*

ummm ... is dorsigerus your all common name for them down there in oz? Cuase the scientific name changed when they switched genus from Aequidens (male=dorsigerus) to Laetacara (female=dorsigera).

*curses OCD sometimes*

Sorry, it was really really bugging me. *hides now*
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It's all good dwarfpike. Usually they are labeled as Laetacara dorsigerus in most LFS. I have heard them refered to as Laetacara dorsigera as well, mostly at my regular LFS. I was unaware that one denotes the male and the other denotes the female.

Always good to learn something new.
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DeadFishFloating
G'day Ruurd,

The plan for the time being is the pot some plants in some terra cotta pots and add these to the two new tanks. Move the two eheims from the large tank to the smaller ones. Then when I move it should be pretty easy to do the eco-complete and sand substrate and go from there.
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DeadFishFloating
2
Well sold my G. araguaia sp. 'orange head' and Corydoras jullii today, and the penguin tetras are being sold on Monday.

So I pulled the plants out the big tank and planted some of them in terra cotta pots. Trimmed the amazon sword plants of all thier large leaves, and had the cut the thin val in half. I think I'm going to have to sell the thin val as they'll outgrow the smaller tanks every fortnight. Thinking I'll go for the shorter twisted or corkscrew val.

Took a couple of photos. OMG those Hagen lights are bright!

First photo is with the flash on.


Second photo is with the off.
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