Going peaceful... what do you guys think?

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Sarah88

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Sep 27, 2009
3,919
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Wilmington, NC
Ok, so as many of you know I had an unfortunate mishap a while back and had a huge die off in my tank, I have decided to do a complete overhaul and go a more peaceful route. i loved my surinamensis geos and thought they were awesome but i know it would have eventually been a tight fit in my 5'x18" footprint with 4 of them and they really should be kept in groups larger than that so i think im going to wait till i have a larger tank before i do geos again. So, here was my idea... a vendor near me has a bunch of FO apistos and a zebra knife. i was thinking of getting several pairs of apistos (along with a T. pasiones pair I am getting from a fellow member) and letting them spread out over the bottom and then get a school of like 6 veil angels and some tetras (probably serpae) for the top/middle part of the tank. i think this sounds like a cool, peaceful tank with tons of activity but not too much outright aggression and nothing that really gets that big, only thing is i have never kept apistos before and was wondering how sensitive they are? water quality wont be an issue but i also dont want to have fish that will die on me if i forget to do a water change on time, or that i have to change the water in a special way or something (right now i just drain 50-70% of the tank, put in the prime and then fill her back up), i have kept wild angels before and they were totally fine with this regimen, so i wouldnt think apistos would be an issue but wanted to see what you guys had to say about them? also anyone have nice pairs they can post pics of, every time i search for pics it always comes up with pics of more than one spp? i know i want at least a pair of agassizi but not sure what else, i like the cacatuoides as well but he doesnt have any right now. which types do you guys think are the most colorful and active. also he sells them in pairs but arent these guys supposed to have more than one female? what he currently has available are:
Apisto. McMasteri F0
Apisto. Baenschi "Inka 50" F0
Apisto. Sp. "Purple" F0
Apisto. Diamante "Strawberry" F0
Apisto. Agasizzi F0
Apisto. eunotus F0
Apisto. Sp. Winkelfleck (Painted Face)
how many pairs (or trios) do you think would comfortably be happy in this set up with the T.pasiones pair and the zebra knife also on the bottom
 
Hey Sarah, I have no experiance with apistos but you should PM Msjinkzd she the one to ask. Tank sounds like it's going to be really nice.
 
Always be careful with angels, especially veils. They will get their long fins nipped by various fish. I have seen serpae tetras nip veil angels' fins.
 
I guess this will be the experiment that everyone gets to follow and learn from haha, i was reading up on them and apparently in the wild they live in pretty crowded conditions so i definitely think i could comfortably do several pairs if not several trios, saying as the females only get like 3in max and the males of some spp. get like 4-5in max. Also how i have my tank set up right now is actually several large pieces of mopani stacked upon each other to make caves within the water column as well as on the bottom so there are PLENTY of hides for small fish like apistos... and thanks aquanero i will def make sure to send her a PM and see what advice she has to give, @ryansmith thanks for the heads up i didnt even think about that, i had a large school of serpaes with my large wild angels and it wasnt an issue but is def a risk ill have to consider, especially since the veils fins would be even longer... i may just try out the stock first with just the apistos, angels and knife and see how i like it, i really liked my old school of serpaes though and they schooled really well and had great colors, not sure what other dither i could use thats colorful and wouldnt nip fins...
 
aclockworkorange said:
I have kept a few apistos and have found them to be pretty damn sensitive to water quality. .
Click to expand...

yeah thats what im afraid of... and these being wild would just exacerbate the issue, but then again i had wild angels with totally no problems until i decided to fiddle around with stocking and added another fish that killed them, and they are supposed to be sensitive too, im not really concerned with producing fry or anything as any fry that did happen to hatch would just be food for the others, im mainly just concerned with keeping them happy and healthy with as little tinkering to my water parameters as possible, my water out the tap is usually right at 7.0 and used to go down a bit through the week when my wood was leeching more but it hardly leeches now so id prolly have to add some oak leaves or something to get the water down lower... anyone have a tank set-up with natural leaf litter on the bottom? just wondering what the mechanics of maintaining a bottom like that would be, obviously couldn't vacuum it but im thinking the fish all swimming around would probably break little bits off and make my water a nightmare of floating leaf bits everywhere...
 
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