Aequidens curviceps and Me
by Doug Williams
First published in Tank Talk, Canberra and District Aquarium Society, Australia
Aquarticles
The Aequidens curviceps comes from the Amazon River region of South America
and can be found in quiet not very deep water. They can also be found in the slight
current in the creeks and such like that run into the Amazon.
I call them "an intermediate -sized cichlid", as both sexes grow to three
inches. About the only way to find the sex difference of the curviceps is, with
mature fish, the dorsal and the anal fins of the male are more elongated in typical
cichlid fashion. With conditioning the female will be a little plumper, and if they are of
the same age a little shorter maybe.
They are a quiet peaceful fish and non-destructive of plants which merits a place in
any representative collection. It is not well to place them with lively fishes, and it is
important to provide them with sufficient retreats if you want to view their normal
habits. I personally find that if you keep them in a smaller tank (two foot) they can't
get "lost from your sight" as far as picking out the sex or dominant fish
difference, and what is going on in the tank. Of course a two foot tank like this would
have to be a species tank. If you want a community tank it would have to be much larger,
to permit individual territories to be established.
My attempts at breeding the curviceps:
First, I found out, you need a male and a female. (Tank Talk Editor's note: this is
not as silly as it sounds. Many's the time that two fish have been thrown into a breeding
tank together with never a single fry resulting: quite often it is caused by not having a
true pair.) Healthy ones at that. (Well conditioned).
Just previous to the Society’s 1983 Sydney fish buying spree, I bought a female curviceps
at a club auction and I managed to buy a well-dorsalled male (as compared to the female).
On returning home I set my two curviceps up in a two foot six inch tank in my
bedroom, and let them grow to maturity. And do what all good cichlids do, or so I thought.
But alas, the male, for reasons of his own, perished.
It was some time (back in those days, and still is today) before I was able to locate
more curviceps locally. I was unable to sex these specimens as they were only
half grown (I can't remember which shop I bought them from) and much time passed before
they grew to maturity. Counting the original female, I now had one male and four females.
The male paired up with one of the females so I removed the other three fishes.
The curviceps is a bottom spawner preferring a flat rock, and my first three
to four spawnings saw the eggs being eaten by the male, about one day after the eggs were
laid. I submersed a net breeder at the top of the tanks and on the next spawning
(approximately three weeks) I moved the egg covered rock to the net breeder so that the
eggs could not be eaten by the parents. Water circulation over the eggs was maintained by
an airstone in a corner of the net breeder and the eggs hatched in three to four days.
However, as the eggs hatched, and the fry wriggled to the bottom of the net, their parents
tried to rescue them by sucking them through the fine mesh, which killed the fry (probably
by bruising).
On the next spawning I did the same but removed the parents to join the other three
females in a twenty inch tank. When the eggs hatched I turned the airstone bubble velocity
down to reduce the water movement within the net breeder so as not to risk bruising the
fry. They became free-swimming after another four days so I started to feed with Liquid
Fry (emulsion fry food). Seven days later their number had dwindled to zero, due either to
over-feeding and polluting the tank or just plain starvation. (I did not do any water
changes in the tank during this spawning.)
The male had again paired up in the twenty inch tank (I don't know if it was the same
female). I removed the others and let the pair spawn freely in the twenty inch tank as the
twenty-six inch tank was now being used for angelfish. I did not remove the eggs and after
two spawnings the fry reached the wriggler stage before being eaten. With the next
spawnings I alternatively tried removing the male or the female but the fry still
perished. Then from one spawning, the fry were free swimming for a whole week before being
eaten or vanishing.
At the next spawning I took no chances, and removed both parents and placed an airstone
near the eggs. At this stage, all my tanks were filtered with undergravel filters and the
filter-plates in this tank were covered by approximately two inches of crushed gravel,
about 3/16ths of an inch in diameter. Crushed gravel makes for larger spaced cavities
between the individual pebbles than if 'rounded' river gravel was used.
A few days after free-swimming I noticed that the fry were going 'caving' between the
gravel and the glass sides of the tank. Either by natural instinct to 'go to ground', or
chasing minute food on the pebbles, they appeared to get lost or stuck in the gravel about
three quarters of an inch below the substrate surface. With my attempts to dig or syphon
the fry out of the gravel I found that I was only hurting them so I let them be and after
a couple of days had lost the lot.
Whilst visiting David Barnard, an aquarist who had raised curviceps fry with
their parents, I found that he mixed his Liquid Fry in a cup of aquarium aquarium water
before pouring it into the tank, whereas I had always just dribbled a few drops into the
tank and swirled it around with my finger to mix it in. Sometimes I would miss a drop or
two and this would settle in a globule on the bottom of the tank, and shortly turn to
fungus.
So it was about this time in my hobby that I started to take everything into
perspective and was eventually successful in raising curviceps fry (away from
their parents) with the knowledge perceived by personal experience and seeing other
aquarist's versions of 'doing the same thing'.
My useful information about dwarf cichlids:
- They require regular water changes, as they are apt to become diseased in old water
- For maintainance, they require a temperature of seventy-four to seventy-six degrees F
and a ten gallon tank minimum. For breeding, a temperature of eighty-two to eighty-six
degrees F.
- You can use a peat filter in the fry raising tank, keeps the water crystal clear and
bacteria down to a minimum. (Editor's note: Don't try this one with Tanganyikan dwarfs
such as Julidochromis or Lamprologus, it makes the water go acid).
This is better than using dyes such as Methylene Blue or Acriflavine, but I have used both
in combination with Malachite Green in the form of Aquarium Pharmaceuticals' 'Multi Cure'
with success.
- If the adults have not been properly conditioned, the finest dyes will not keep the
eggs alive.
- Kribs (Pelvicachromis pulcher and relatives) and Nanochromis nudiceps
have large fry which accept baby brine shrimp for first foods, can use under-gravel
filters.
- Apistogramma sp. and Aequidens curviceps have small fry, capable of
being lost in filters. They need small first fry foods, but once they are big enough to
accept baby brine shrimp the hobbyist has then achieved a major advancement in his or her
'Aquaristic Knowledge'.
Editor's Note: Thanks to Doug for sharing his long struggle with curviceps with us.
No wonder he now concentrates on Rainbowfishes, something he does very well.
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