Cockatoo cichlid

Water parameters

Tolerated range for this species. Aim for the middle of each band rather than the extremes.

Tank and habitat

Substrate: fine.

Behavior

Plant interaction: plant safe.

Feeding

Omnivore with a leaning toward live and frozen meaty foods. Frozen bloodworm, brine shrimp, daphnia, live blackworms, and live baby brine shrimp are all taken without hesitation, along with high-quality micro pellets and flake. It is one of the more pellet-friendly Apistogramma. Live food brings out peak male colour and is the usual way to bring pairs into breeding condition. Feed twice a day.

Compatibility

• The friendliest Apistogramma for a beginner. Wider water-parameter tolerance than the rest of the genus, and it does well in a planted community tank
• In the wild it forms harems. In aquaria, one male with two or three females in a tank from about 75 to 100 L is the standard setup. Putting two males together calls for a tank closer to 120 L with proper sight-line breaks, since the radius a brooding female defends is around 30 cm
• Mid- and upper-water schoolers such as small tetras, rasboras, and pencilfish make good company. In a community breeding tank, expect most of the fry to be picked off by faster swimmers unless the layout is heavily planted
• Other bottom-dwelling cichlids are best avoided, and fin-nippers and larger, more aggressive cichlids will dominate them
• The oversized head and exaggerated dorsal-fin rays on a mature male are normal sexual development, not a deformity

Origin and habitat

An upper-Amazon dwarf cichlid, distributed across Peru, Colombia, and western Brazil along the Ucayali, Solimoes, and main Amazon, with collection records stretching from the Pachitea downriver to roughly Tabatinga. It uses the slow margins of these systems: tributary backwaters, lagoons, and small creeks where leaves and other debris pile up on the substrate, in water that ranges from clear to white to black depending on which feeder system it is in and what time of year it is. The Dutch ichthyologist J.J. Hoedeman formally described the species in 1951. The name translates as 'cockatoo-like', a reference to the way the first few dorsal-fin rays in mature males extend into a tall fan that looks like the crest on a cockatoo. The original type locality, Paramaribo in Suriname, was wrong; Kullander later corrected it to the Amazon basin between roughly 69 and 71 degrees west. This is the most widely bred Apistogramma in the hobby and one of the easier members of the genus to start with, partly because it does fine in harder, more alkaline water than most of its relatives. Field measurements from the Rio Ucayali, where most wild fish are collected, put the local water at around pH 7.4 to 7.6 and 10 to 12 dGH; in side-by-side aquarium tests, wild stock spawned in hard tap water around pH 7.5 and 15 dGH but did not breed in the soft, acidic water that suits most other Apistogramma. Adult males reach about 8 to 9 cm and develop a conspicuously enlarged head and oversized mouth, which they use in slow-motion yawning displays at other males; females stay smaller, around 5 cm, mostly plain until they enter brood care and then flush bright yellow with strong black markings. Decades of selective breeding from the 1980s onward produced the well-known 'Double Red' line (with the red on the dorsal and caudal fins filled in to solid red), the rarer 'Triple Red' (red also reaching into the anal and pelvic fins), and 'Orange Flash'. The species also has an interesting alternative mating tactic: subordinate males suppress the male crest and coloration, pass for females in the eyes of the dominant male, and slip in to mate when they get the chance; if the dominant male is removed, those sneakers can switch on and grow into full male appearance. IUCN Least Concern.

Breeding

Spawns in caves and runs on female-led brood care. In the wild a single dominant male holds a larger territory and shares it with several breeding females. The female picks her own cave (coconut shell, clay pot, length of PVC, the underside of a broad leaf) and lays adhesive eggs on the cave roof; the eggs are a salmon colour. The male visits the cave only long enough to fertilize, doing it in the same upside-down posture the female used. Clutch sizes are quite variable, often around 80 to 150 and reaching 200 or more from a well-conditioned female. From that point the female does all the close-in work, fanning and guarding the eggs and turning intense yellow as a flag that she is in breeding mode, while the male manages the outer territory. Eggs hatch in about three to four days depending on temperature, the wrigglers spend a few more days on the yolk, and the fry go free-swimming roughly a week after spawning. First foods are newly hatched brine shrimp, microworms, and whatever biofilm microfauna the tank produces. One useful detail is that rearing temperature affects the sex ratio of the offspring: around 25 to 26 C produces a balanced split, while higher temperatures push the brood strongly male. Pairs that are well fed will spawn at intervals of a few weeks. Many trade lines have been damaged by commercial inbreeding, so stock from a known breeder or wild import tends to be sturdier and more clearly dimorphic.

Common problems

Less fussy about water than most Apistogramma, but the species still benefits from clean water and a low nitrate reading. Hexamita, which is tied to hole-in-the-head lesions, turns up when water quality slips or the fish is on a thin diet; the response is to clean the husbandry up and dose metronidazole if needed. Wild-caught fish often carry internal parasites and may waste despite continuing to eat, so quarantine new stock and treat with an antiparasitic such as praziquantel. The main social hazard is male aggression toward females in a tank with too few caves and not enough sight-line breaks: a female with no way to get out of the male's view can be killed by sustained harassment. The rule of thumb is more caves than there are females. Commercial inbreeding has thinned out many trade lines and blurred the sexual dimorphism in some of them, so a reputable breeder is the better starting point.

Bioload

Further reading

• How to cycle a fish tank
• Stocking ideas by tank size