Apistogramma baenschi

[TW]

I picked up 4 of Mke's Apistogramma Baenschi juvis today. They are sharing QT at the moment with my Heckels. They are still very small, but they look like they will be very nice when they grow up.

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l128/TankWatcher/165L/000_2019.jpg

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l128/TankWatcher/165L/000_2020.jpg

[boost.puppy]

wow.. mine have hidden & won't come out for anything!

They are cute aren't they?

[TW]

You got some too? Nice :D

They seemed a little shy at first, but do come out from their hiding spots to patrol the tank. They were more interested in eating my discus beef heart than anything else so far.

[boost.puppy]

mine won't eat :(

I think yours look slightly larger than mine though.. and I feed my fish mal's freeze dried blackworms or frozen bloodworms or spirulina flakes... I ran out of pellets :(

I thought I had brine shrimp but it turned out to be spirulina brine, the lil guys won't even look at it :(

I have heaps of marine & marine green, but I doubt they'd eat that!!!!

[Th0mas]

Mine just couldn't resist frozen bloodworm (however they were raised with them).

Perhaps they're just settling in - give them a day or two and try again.

[TW]

boost.puppy, they are probably shy / stressed from moving in, particularly if they are a little smaller. Try some frozen blood worm. I think mine did eat that as well, but I know for sure they picked at the home made beef heart.

Mine may have figured out it was food, by watching my young/small Heckels (who are in QT with them) so they had "teachers" of a sort to give them the idea. I don't know if that really helped or not though, as it's just speculation on my part that it might have.

Do you have any garlic guard or similar. If you do, try soaking the food in it for a few minutes before dropping it in the tank.

Are yours in a bare bottom tank? Good luck with them.

[boost.puppy]

well they are in my small tank which is a 80L tank, they have a house mate (an albino ghostknife) but I was really careful to keep them seperate & theres thousands of little holes & crevices too small for the Ghostknife so they are safe.

I noticed they came out last night for a little bit, I tried to geta good look at them with a light & they dissapeared again.

it has substrate & pots for them to hide, it's also a heavily planted tank, so that may be the problem.

I think your right about leaving it a few days, But the bloodworms look too large to fit in their mouths!!!

I might put one of my gold rams in with them to "teach them" what's food :)

[TW]

Good luck with getting them to eat. It's often tricky with new apistos.

[boost.puppy]

they ate last night & are swimming around like nothing scares them! then i turned the lights on & they hid like little girls :P

I swapped my lighting for a lower level of light (fluro's as appossed to T5's) I also swapped the light spectrum from 10,000k to 6000k, I'm hoping they will appreciate less light :)

thanks for the support guys!

[TW]

Thought I'd mention mine ate Mals freeze dried blood worms. I think you said you have them too.