# Apistos and frozen brine shrimp -- not a good idea?



## hollyfish2000 (Aug 23, 2007)

Ever the optimist, I am trying apistos again. Gawd, I luv 'em! Got an agassizi pair to add to my lone leftover female; and got a borelli pair (that little girl is the cutest thing I've ever seen)! But I digress . . .

I feed these two tanks (planted, community) a rotation of frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp (with and without spirulina) and NLS flakes. Someone just told me that apistos don't handle brine shrimp well and that should be avoided? Is this true?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

In my personal experience, I lost one or two apistos right after spawning when I used bloodworm or frozen adult brine... this tailed off significantly when I stopped using those foods.

Frozen baby brine was always eagerly devoured without a problem.


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## hollyfish2000 (Aug 23, 2007)

Hmmm. The LFS I got them from was feeding blood worms. I've never seen frozen baby brine, but will look. Is there any other frozen that works? Is it that the bloodworms are too rich? Too big?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

hollyfish2000 said:


> Is it that the bloodworms are too rich? Too big?


undigestible exoskeletons... males especially would try and gorge if they could and one day (not necessarily that day) that male would come down with bloat.


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## Dutch Dude (Sep 14, 2006)

Imo problems with apisto's are related with flagellates. When apisto's are kept in a stressfull situation and poor water qualety illnesses like bloat can occure. Apisto's from the average lfs often look ok but when they are introduced in your tank at home troubles often begin. The stress from an other move can make the fish weak and flaggelates become a problem. Often those fish spawn within 2 weeks or so (to keep their genes going) and die afterwards.

In my experience it works the best when you put them in quarantine for at least 6 weeks, keep them in a tank with only a 1/4 inch sand layer, caves and nothing else and start treating them with metro or dimetro right away. I also suggest lots of live foods and especially daphnia (works as a laxative). You need to treat the fish for abouth a week. keep the water at maximum qualety and do lots of large water changes with aged water. After abouth 4 weeks you slowely can go to normal routines and treat them like normal fish. If you want healthy good qualety fish you can spawn them and keep some of the fry for your own tank and sell of the remaining fish or buy right away from a hobby breeder or local breeder. Be careful with fish from the Czech republic becouse those are often invested with flagellates.

I spawned my hongsloi II and treated them like mentioned abouve. I kept the parents and small batch of fry, feed them frozen bloodworms (50%) and frozen artemis (50%) and only a few of them feed on pellets. No issues no problems all fish are healthy for over a year now.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Dutch Dude said:


> When apisto's are kept in a stressfull situation and poor water qualety illnesses like bloat can occure.


In my case, water quality was perfect being from an R/O system with 10% tap mixed back in with 50% weekly water changes with nitrates at a big Zero with the help of plants. Tanks were understocked being pairs in 20g long tanks.

The majority of pairs spawned beautifully and repeatedly, so let's just say that bloat can occur even when you do things perfectly but use the food "frozen bloodworm". 
I did not lose any males after spawning if I stuck to a quality pellet like NLS.

I am sure that some folks can use bloodworm without issue, but that was not my case.


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## Dutch Dude (Sep 14, 2006)

Number6,....your experience is diferent to mine. If my apisto's would feed on pellets I would feed them les frozen thats for sure but the thing is mine don't or very rarely feed on pellets. Still they thrive on the artemis and bloodworms. I expect bloodworms to be less suitable food as artemis. For example Stendker doesn't feed their discus bloodworms becouse of the high bacteria levels but do suggest to feed artemis in stead. I expect the real big problem is in refrozen or poor qualety frozen.

Abouth the bloat,.....fish can bloat becouse of overfeeding or poor qualety foods. Fish can also bloat coused by internal infections coused by flaggelates. I was talking abouth the fish bloated becouse of flaggelates. Fish can carry flaggelates without getting ill. When they reach an old age or stress, poor water qualety or poor foods the number of flaggelates can increase and make the fish ill. I experienced 4 times problems a few day's after I bought apisto's from 2 different lfs. Their health already was compromised (crowded tanks, low water temperature) and the colors were faded. The move to my tank was an other stressful event for the fish. When I went back to the lfs to replace the lost fish they suddenly "sold" all of them. I'm sure they didn't and they died in the lfs. This happened to me several times until I start treating the fish like very delicate wild fish and start using flaggelix of the brand Colombo containing dimetro (related to metro). This is what I experienced and I hope this contributes.


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## hollyfish2000 (Aug 23, 2007)

I appreciate the different viewpoints. I should clarify that both apisto pairs are already in my established tanks so pre-treating them for disease is a moot point. I am also not interested in breeding them; it's not the intent although if it happens that's fine. There are also no issues with water quality, etc. My only issue is my concern that I might be feeding them incorrectly to achieve my only goal -- to keep them alive and happy! I have not tried to feed them NLS pellets but given their lack of interest in flakes, I'm not optimistic about that.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

all goes to show how mileage can vary with cichlids... I've never once found apistos to be fussy eaters
:thumb:


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