# Apistogramma trifasciata 'Blue'



## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

I waited a long time to try and get Apistogramma cacatuoides 'Blue' and finally ended up with the Apistogramma trifasciata 'Blue' as a substitute. I was a little disappointed at first because I liked the lyretail of the cacatuoides. But these turned out to be fabulous fish. I got these as a special order by Menagerie all the way from Germany. Thanks Harold for your help.

I bought 5 pairs of juvenile trifasciata and threw them all into my newly cyclied 55 gallon 18 x 36 tank two weeks ago. The tank has dozens of rock caves, overgrowth of plastic plants and a few beautiful natural plants in little sinking clay pots, all in a bare bottom tank. Any time I want I can rip everything out and throw it into a pail and clean up the tank. Already into the tank at that time were 4 medium sized cardinal tetras and 2 julii cory cats. Since that time I've added 4 small oto cats as the algae has started nicely. 

Now I know that this is not the standard way to raise Apistogramma which is to put only one male in a tank but this is working out just the way I thought it would. The dominant male is so tired of chasing because he has to chase everybody that nothing much ever happens. The smaller males challenge his territory then he turns blue and shakes his body and they take off and he runs at them but not fast enough to catch them. So far I only see wonderful ballet dances.

These fish are fabulous chamelions. They change their colours to blend into the background and when other trifasciatas are around they change their colours to talk to the other fish and I understand the females talk to their fry by changing colours. The black line under the dorsal changes from checkerboard to solid at times.

Here is a photo of the dominaant male coming out of his cave. He's in his muted colours to blend with his surroundings. A few seconds later he sees his reflection in the bottom glass and instantly turns blue and flares his fins. His blues have developed since I got him and his reds are just starting to show a bit. He's just under 1.5" so still has another 1/3 to grow.


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## greenterror23 (Oct 20, 2008)

nice apisto, how much was it?only male no female? ^^


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

On the bottom towards the left you can see the dominant male chasing one of the smaller males. He's the biggest male and lives on the far right of the tank and doesn't normally go to the left hand side of the tank. He seems however to be wanting to expand his territory.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Suddenly as he gets too far to the left of the aquarium the big male is met by a nasty surprize. Three smaller males gang up on him. They are frozen in place, just hovering in front of him, flaring their fins. That's him behind against the plants. Even the oto cat sitting on top of the green quartz seems to be giving him the evil eye.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

So faced with this gang of thugs teaming up to defend their territory there was only one thing to do. He turned sideways and started to shake his tail at them. That's a warning because they do sometimes give the other fish a good slap in the face with their balloon tails. If you look just above his tail you can see the dominant female poking out from the plants watching the whole thing. The females have gold metalic jewels on their faces and you can see two of them glowing just in front of her eyes. Even she didn't seem that impressed and the male seemed to get the message. He shortly turned tail and rushed back across the tank towards his cave and has never seemed to go back on the left since that time.


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

Welcome to the forum and nice apistos. Guess I'll have to bug Harold to get me some unless you're looking to offload a pair


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Here's the male swimming back to his cave after his defeat by the left side gang. He's lost all his colour and he even passes by a nice fat female just behind his tail. She's facing you so she just looks like a little yellow blob above the red rock.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

However she gives him the eye and he wheels around to look at her with her little black eyelines and erects his dorsal when he seel how pretty she is. Seconds later he has turned blue and started shaking at her.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Here's one of the females in her most muted colours. She likes to hang out in the reptile cave on the left and she's trying to copy the colour. The females do get quite bright yellow at times especially when trying to warn another female off her territory. There are bright golden metalic jewels on their faces where the males have blue metallic jewels. 

I have never seen this before in any cichlid but the dominant male one time flared his gills right out like a betta.


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## pat3612 (Jan 29, 2008)

Very cool nice fish I kind of like the bare bottom looks neat


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

This is the whole aquarium. It's 55 gallons 18" x 36" and about two thirds full to aid in air exchange. I have an RO water filter for my orchids so what I do is take two gallons a day out of the aquarium and use it to water the orchids and refill the tank with the filtered water. The orchids seem to love it and the tank seems happy. The PH tests out at 6.4 and I don't test anything else. I figure I'm changing a lot of water, about 1/3 tank per week or more and that's all I'm going to do. After that it's live or die.

You can see the tank is pretty bright here and this photo is taken without a flash. It's my ghetto tank hood I'm using as I'm to cheap to pay for an expensive hood and this one is better than anything I could buy for 10 times more.

Here is the ghetto hood:
4 deep dish giant lasagna pans from the dollar store $6.00
Taped together with 2 rolls of silver duct tape $3.00
Bottom is cut out and mounted on the top 3 Ikea hanging light fixtures $18.00
Max watts is 75 watts each but I have 2 x 13w and 1 x 23w daylight mini spirals 6500K from home depot $14.00

I bought a 43 watt 6500k bulb but I'm afraid to use it and get too much algae. After the tank is cycled better and I can add some more algae eaters I could goose up the watts to 2 X 23w and 1 x 43w or even 3 x 43 watt. In the mean time the plants seem to be growing well especially the Darwin River Ambulia.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Here's a look at the ghetto light hood. It's made from 4 giant deep dish aluminum lasagna pans. Inside there's a threaded washer that holds the aluminum to the fixture which has a standard screw base max 75w each. They have 15 foot heavy cords and a hanging clip with a cup hook. It never seems to get very hot even though right now it's 49 watts. The 6500K mini-spirals are great for plant growth and I use them all the time for growing my orchids. The best thing is when the bulbs burn out it only costs a few dollars to replace them at Home Depot. They are sold in 9w 13w 23w and 43w. No one is to say that you couldn't put 6 or 8 fixtures into this device and end up with 16000 lumens of very good light. Of course any other bulb could be screwed in as long as it was below 75w.

I know it's a bit tacky but noone can see it because there's a piece of masonite in front of it. I could always spray paint it black. It seems very sturdy even though it's 36 inches by 14 inches. It works very nicely.


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## Tropicana (Feb 15, 2009)

Creative. not bad for aluminum lasagna pans lol.


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## Cory_Dad (Apr 18, 2008)

AND, if you flip them right side up you can cook lasagna in them too.....


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

I tried lasagna but the fish don't seem to like it.

By the way that reminds me--these fish are picky eaters. For the first few days I tried all the food I had on hand. Staple flakes, small freeze dried plankton, freeze dried tubifax, slow sinking baby cichled pellets, algae wafers, freeze dried brine shrimps, cichlid flakes and colour flakes. They didn't eat anything and the cardinals ate everything. By the end of each feeding the cardinals looked like hatchet fish and quickly doubled in size from small to medium.

Finally I went to Jewel in the Menagerie. You know for a girl that young and so pretty she has an astounding knowledge. And she's charming as well. Anyway she told me there isn't a fish alive that won't eat freeze dried blood worms. So I got the pop out frozen cubes. She took the time to show me how to use them with her little pipette. She really is a jewel.

So yes they did eat the frozen bloood worms, slowly at first and the cardinals gobbled most of them to the point of bursting. Now I've got them trained as they seem very smart. I tap on the aquarium lightly with my fingernails in sequence and show them the little jar of bloodworms and gently tap the jar lid on the glass. They just swarm to the front feeding zone and wait and wag their tails like little puppies. There seems to be very little agression at feeding time. And they gobble up the worms like crazy now. So I soaked the freeze dried tubifax with the bloodworms and they eat the blend. Even the hatchet fish has now come out of hiding to eat the floaters. I got some liquid vitamins for the soaking as well as they can't live on worms alone. I've tried blending flakes and pellets and freeze dried brine shrimp into the mix but they just reject them. A few fish have mouthed them but spit the flakes right out again. Even yesterday I crished a couple of plankton and dropped them in at the beginning of feeding time but they just ignored them. The cardinals were grabbing them in a frenzy right in front of them but they didn't get the message.

So any suggestions as to what to feed pickey fish would be apreciated.


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

I'd suggest they likely aren't picky, but just adjusting to a new environment.

Apistos are very intelligent, so once they get over their fear of you approaching the tank, they will eat quite well.

I feed frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms, frozen daphnia, freeze dried bloodworms, tubifex worms, and NLS pellets to my rams and apisto's. They eat everything.

Just give them some time to adjust.


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## jewel-stavroula (Jan 11, 2008)

Wow Brian, They Are Beautiful Fish And Your Tank Seems Very Nice As Well!!!!!


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

Why Capitalize Every Letter Jewel?


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

tO geT tO thE otheR sidE


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## simsimma (Aug 3, 2008)

how much did u pay for em>


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## Shattered (Feb 13, 2008)

Wow, amazing journal. I like the pics of the fish and the Ghetto hood rocks.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Simsimma,
How much I paid may not be relative. I told Harold I didn't care how much they cost, I wanted top quality fish for breeding. Then again these fish came all the way from Germany on Lufthansa. And you have to understand I ended up with 5 pairs. 

The idea of course is to raise and sell the fry. I've been reading for months about Apistogrammas and waiting for these fish for a long time. One of the things I read was that the trifasciata Blue from Germany was far superior to the wild blue with brilliant metallic blues from selective breeding. I see that in mine even though they are juveniles. The nice thing about this fish is they end up at 2.2" for males and 1.5" female. So anybody with a small tank could probably keep them as long as they had the water. These really are dwarf but they are true cichlids. Just look at the above photo of the dominant male giving chase and you will see what I mean.

I hope I can make lots of babies and flood the GTA with these georgeous fish. All I can say is follow this thread and hopefully in six or eight months I can put an ad in the for sale section. 

In the mean time the fish have settled into the tank nicely. There is some chasing but that's about all. The smaller males seem to be able to swim faster and the larger ones stop after a short run and return to protect their territory. It's good exercise and the agression is spread evenly. I have two other almost empty tanks waiting in case I have to seperate anybody but so far it seems like everything is okay.

Keeping my fingers crossed....


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Here's an updated photo of my Apistogramma trifasciatus, the largest male. He's patrolling his territory in front of his cave. His reds have really come in lately and his tail seems to be getting larger and less transparent. It's a bit hard to see his dorsal here but at the back it looks dark orange in this light and extends out pointed over his tail. It's interesting to note that his black horizontal line has gone very thin and fine except for a thickening in his middle and at the end of his tail. He seems to be sending some kind of a message.

I had trouble in the tank with dark purple bba growing all over my vals, my pygmy chain and microswords and wish I had never put live plants into the tank. I don't want any algae eaters disturbing my tank other than my 3 oto cats so the answer I came up with was to rip all the live plants out of the tank and unplug the center light bulb. I have an 18 x 30 hex tank which is just horrible. Everything I ever put in there died due to no surface area. The only thing that survived was my bullhead from Grenadier Pond which lived in there for about 12 years. Unfortunately or fortunately he died the week before and the tank was now empty. So I plunked the plants in and put in 3 Siamese algae eaters. I made a ghetto hood from two small deep roasters and put in the 43 watt 6500K bulb. It's really bright and the plants seem to be liking it. The next day I went to put a rock into the tank and realized the water was hot. The heater had seized and everything was way too hot. l ripped out the heater but it was another day before I could get another one. So the tank went from too hot to too cold around 68f. But the algae eaters woke up when the new heater went in and started to clean and they sweem to be doing a good job as a lot of the algae is gone. I lost all my vals due to the heat. And then I figured out that the old heater seizing up had also killed my bullhead.

So all is not perfect where the cooest breeze blows but we are surviving.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Suddenly there's an intruder. A smaller male has come to challenge him. He flares up his fins and turns on his red and freezes like that in front of the other fish. His horizontal stripe is also dark and wide.

Then in the second photo although it looks like a fish looking at himself in the glass, it is the two fish head to head. They froze like that for about ten seconds and the larger male facing you flared out his gills like a betta. You can see them on the photo as they are lighter blue because of the metalic jewels. Anyway after this the smaller male took off and the larger male ran back to his cave to make sure nobody else was lurking around it.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

A nice fat female goes flying past the cardinal and there's a male chasing her just outside of the photo on the left.

She abruptly turns on him in the second photo and turns bright yellow and tells him to .. off. He's so shocked he loses all his colour and turns into a wimp.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Some of the guys are hanging around showing off for each other. Also I see the golden foreheads are starting to show sometimes.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

The one on the left is the one I call the 'Prom King'. He's the second largest and he looks better to me than the dominant one. He still doesn't have all his red yet but he's starting. He's much more relaxed than the dominant one who seems to be always stressed out guarding his nest. At feeding time he rushes out, grabs a bloodworm and rushes back to his cave front. The 'prom king' is more confident and he know's he's beautiful. He has several females in his territory on the left of the tank including the dominant female.


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## CoolestBreeze (Apr 12, 2009)

Here's a group photo where I actually managed to capture 7 trifasciatas 4 males and three females. It's feeding time at the breezeway so the fish are helter skelter searching for blood worms.The prom king is in the middle facing right and loooking good. The dominant male is a way off to the right out of sight guarding his cave.


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