# Laetacara curviceps??



## Adanac00 (Nov 12, 2013)

Anyone have any experience with this Fish?? 
my fish guy got some in from a supplier labeled as Apisto Agassizzi but they are clearly laetacara Curviceps. I am interested in them as i am into Dwarf Cichlids and would like to learn more about them? think they might be an interesting addition to my fish room.

Any info or Pictures of your fish would be great. tank size? Tank mates? and tips on how to sex them because from what i can see with these young fish its pretty hard.

Adanac00


----------



## noilding (Feb 15, 2015)

(First post on the forum) My wife and I have kept Curviceps for about 6 months now. Here's the stats on the tank:

30 Long Planted
CO2 injected
pH (no CO2): 7.6 (as of late the CO2 has been down for repair)
pH (w/ CO2): 6.6-6.8
kH: 4
Temp: 80-82
Water changes: Every other week, 5 or 10 gal.
Decorations: A few rocks, some nice drift wood, a piece of slate, lots of live plants.
Substrate: Pool sand.
Fishies: (5) Otos, (3) Odessa Barbs, (3) Black Skirt Tetras, (7) Cardinal Tetras, (7) Dwarf Cories, (3) Laetacara curviceps (one male, two female).

#1, they are extremely peaceful, though they can fend for themselves. I'm probably going to add blue rams to the tank some time in the near future, which seems risky since some cichlids fight, but they are just so dang nice to everyone that I can't imagine they would mind another dwarf cichlid in the tank with them.

#2, curviceps are interesting, but not brilliantly colored (as compared to blue rams). I'm sure yours are olive with some dark banding. They do develop nice iridescent blue colors when they are happier and feeling sexy. Most of the time our male is fairly bland (light olive with some banding) with a pale blue sheen over half his body and a little around the face. The females, however, get pretty dark and interesting looking. They vary between light olive with very little banding (stress or someone just made them feel intimidated) to full-on black over most of their body with a nice ruby undertone around the belly and blue iridescent coloring mixed into the black and around the face (time to make babies). Almost all of the time they have some red, blacks, and blues in their dorsal and caudal fins.

#3, the most interesting time to watch them is when the females start facing-off in some sort of fishy duel. They puff their gills, bend their bodies, and circle each other slowly. Their eyes get dilated (which is very interesting looking), their colors get rich and dark, and they have their mouths wide open like they are screaming silently at each other. When it gets serious, they start whipping their tails at each other. Usually the dominant female backs the other one into a corner and she scurries away. They sometimes come close to touching lips, but they have never actually come in contact with each other. Its really fun to watch.

#4, when it comes to breeding, websites are no help. Everyone is like, "These are easy fish. You just need to give them the right parameters." Well, they don't really give you much to go on besides the parameters that they are happy living in: they like low pH, soft water, high temps, and lots of varied foods. The water out of the tap was at 7.6, it was very hard when I set the tank up, I was running the temps in the low 70's, and I fed them premium cichlid pellets and some frozen blood worms. Obviously I wasn't doing much right. The fish responded in-kind and had no interest in breeding (though the females always found it in their best interest to pick fights with each other). So I decided to work at getting them to breed. I had recently bought a CO2 tank for plants, so the pH had been holding steady at about 6.8. I bought a heater, I started feeding them blood worms a little more often (maybe once a week instead of once a month), and I hoped that the water hardness would magically go down.

I did read somewhere that they like an open area with a flat, smooth rock to lay eggs on. They supposedly like plant cover adjacent to the rock, and some level of seclusion from the tank. I added some rocks in the corners of the tank where the plants are most heavily planted.

Once I brought the temps up to 80, the fish immediately darkened up. Their breeding behavior started to come out a little too (the male started getting more interested in the females, and eventually one in particular). My CO2 tank actually went out of commission a couple weeks after adding the heater and the pH went back up to 7.6. Also, my hardness did, in fact, magically go down to 4, and has remained there on its own accord (who knows why?). Several weeks after adding the heater, they bred (yesterday).

My assessment is this: temp definitely matters, water hardness might matter, and feeding more often seemed to help. Also, the rock and plant advice was almost spot-on. The breeding pair took to a corner of the tank where there was plant cover all around, but they didn't lay the eggs on a flat rock out in front of the plants. They laid their eggs on a piece of vertical slate, like an angel fish would, and they chose the back-side of it, which is densely covered by plants.

#5, I'll add pictures later.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

-Matt


----------



## noilding (Feb 15, 2015)

The Tank









The females duking it out.









The breeding female's colors.

















The male.


----------



## Mr Chromedome (Feb 12, 2013)

The fish in the photos are not _curviceps_, but _Laetacara dorsigera_. They are often mislabelled as _curviceps_, which is the only name in all the old books. Most wholesalers don't keep up with proper identification. The real _curviceps_ has more blue spangling on the flanks.

Essentially the two species have the same requirements, being closely related but found in different river systems.


----------



## noilding (Feb 15, 2015)

That's good to know! Everything makes sense now. I was disappointed they weren't more blue, like in pictures of the curviceps.


----------



## sajika (Aug 24, 2014)

Yes, your fish are certainly dorsigera and very nice fish... Good luck...


----------



## noilding (Feb 15, 2015)

Thanks!

@Adanac00, was anything I provided helpful?


----------

