Mega Red Apisto

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graucow

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
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176
Hello all, i recently purchased a pair of mega red apistos, the male died after three days of keeping him. He was very colorful and looked healthy but on the third day he could barely swim and would just lay on the bottom of the tank. Something i noticed was he would eat a flake then spit back out. Does anyone know what might have happened? Ive read things saying apistos are very hardy and other things saying they are fragile. The female is still alive and well
 
Hi he seemed ok to me, but i treated the other fish with API and it seemed to heal it. I also think the other fish may be a male
 
A little lost - so both fish were treated or just the other one?

Sometimes I find they just don’t transition well.
 
Only the other one was treated, the first one died before I had any idea something was wrong
 
Assuming "mega red" is some color variant of A. cacatuoides they should be relatively hardy and easy to keep.

Hard to know in hindsight but I would expect the common causes for death shortly after acclimation to be:
  • The fish already had a disease or internal parasite
  • The tank has going through a cycle or mini-cycle
  • There was some contaminant in the water
  • Poor treatment at the LFS or in shipping to the LFS
  • Poor quality, hormone fed stock
  • It hadn't been eating for a long-time(should be fairly obvious from looking at the fish though)
  • Aggression from some other fish in the tank

Basically, all the same things you could consider when any fish dies.
 
I believe it had a parasite, the other apisto was showing the same symptoms and so i tried to cure it with API general cure and it is eating again so I am hopeful.
 
I bought the other apisto and was told it was a female however i am starting to think it is a male but I've been told other wise, i was wondering if anyone could tell for sure, i will post a picture
 
Great, i thought it was a male, i think it was a sneaky male when I first got it though. This means I had a pair of males before
 
Those are two males. Female apistogramma cacatuoides lack the orange fins that are characteristic of the males and tend to be mostly yellow with a black stripe that runs the length of their body.

In the heavily line bred forms of A. cacatuoides the females often have many male traits including fin coloration, caudal fin extensions, dorsal fin shape, etc. The males will usually be larger at full adult size but sometimes sub-dominant males will stay small.
 
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