Apistogramma Agassizii Spawning On Camera

[Lowells Fish Lab]

I'm continuing my effort to spy on cave spawners during their most intimate moments. After starting with Apistogramma Cacatuoides, the next on my list was Agassizii.

Here's are some shots from the first recording:

Getting ready

First Eggs

Male still being TERRIBLE at fertilizing eggs

Male leaving halfway through because fish

Female proudly surveying her work

 

I knew these eggs would be infertile after being illuminated like this but it was still a valuable learning experience. Very little difference in behavior from the cacatuoides, just a little more aggression.

I wish he was smart and not just good looking.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Lowells Fish Lab

[Fish Folk]

Nicely done! Those red egg casings -- are your feeding lots of live baby brine shrimp? Xtreme flakes? Carotenoid-rich foods? 

[Lowells Fish Lab]

BBS and live daphnia. Putting my outdoor tubs to work

[Griznatch]

Fantastic images of the spawn!

[Torrey]

Fabulous images of the spawning!!!!

That last sentence though "I wish he was smart and not just good looking"🤣🤣🤣

He's a teenager, he can't help it. lol

Give him some time, they get better. Took most of my discus dads at least 3 spawns before they had half a clue, and if I artificially raised a spawn, those males were in desperate need of a remedial class to learn not just how to properly fertilize (that still took 3 to 4 spawns) but learning to care for the brood/care for the eggs tookthem *way* longer than the males who got to grow up with poppa. Parenting is modeled behavior. 

[CornAndCrawlers]

whoa, these are some amazing photos! Also, I never knew that shining light on an egg would effect them--learned something new today,

[Lowells Fish Lab]

On 4/29/2022 at 8:50 PM, CornAndCrawlers said:

I never knew that shining light on an egg would effect them--learned something new today,

I think it's the intensity of the lighting that really matters. I don't think bright lighting is good for any egg but in this case I have an LED maybe 4 inches away from the eggs. It's pretty bright. I can only speak from my own experience but back when I was filming cacatuoides spawns I pretty exhaustively demonstrated to myself that eggs wouldn't fertilize properly under intense lighting. I have a hypothesis that maybe the male's free floating milt is getting nuked as opposed to the eggs. Kribensis on the other hand fertilize eggs directly. They make physical contact with them. In that case I was able to illuminate the cave and it didn't interfere at all with fertilization or hatching.

[Torrey]

On 4/29/2022 at 11:07 PM, Lowells Fish Lab said:

I think it's the intensity of the lighting that really matters. I don't think bright lighting is good for any egg but in this case I have an LED maybe 4 inches away from the eggs. It's pretty bright. I can only speak from my own experience but back when I was filming cacatuoides spawns I pretty exhaustively demonstrated to myself that eggs wouldn't fertilize properly under intense lighting. I have a hypothesis that maybe the male's free floating milt is getting nuked as opposed to the eggs. Kribensis on the other hand fertilize eggs directly. They make physical contact with them. In that case I was able to illuminate the cave and it didn't interfere at all with fertilization or hatching.

Makes sense, light is a wave after all. When we were studying risks versus benefits for ultrasounds during pregnancy, one of the studies that really stood out to me and made me a lot more critical about how research is conducted, was the review on the *increase* in birth defects and low birth weights in highly monitored pregnancies. The original research was showing the benefits of ultrasound (again, waves hitting newly developing cells) by highlighting all the interventions they were able to do to.... but when the studied pregnancies were matched against other pregnancies with same risk factors, they discovered the more ultrasounds conducted during pregnancy correlated with higher incidences of defects. I believe it was either Australia or NHS that was planning an additional study to review if the timing of the ultrasounds (specific fetal developmental periods may be at higher risk than others) impacted specific organ development, but it hadn't received funding yet by the time I left school (and lost access to a lot of peer-reviewed research).

[Lowells Fish Lab]

On 4/29/2022 at 11:26 PM, Torrey said:

Makes sense, light is a wave after all.

Yep, exactly. And my LED is heavy in the blue spectrum which is pretty up there in terms of short wavelength/high energy. My thinking is that the bright light is almost like I'm putting the free floating milt through a UV sterilizer before it ever reaches the eggs. The only answer I've ever found to the question "are apisto eggs light sensitive?" Is no. They're not. But no one said anything about the milt.

A test I would be interested in doing is illuminating a cave with red spectrum light only and see if it's less inhibiting. Another simple test would be to leave the cave dark during the spawn but then turn it on for the majority of egg development time and see if they turn out fertile or not. I just haven't done either yet. I'm willing to sacrifice a spawn or two for filming but after that, it's fish baby time.

Speaking of babies, I'll never look at ultrasounds the same again.

[Torrey]

On 4/30/2022 at 9:04 AM, Lowells Fish Lab said:

Speaking of babies, I'll never look at ultrasounds the same again.

Definitely changed my opinion about a lot of the the things we assume are healthcare in this country.... Especially when I found out that the more ultrasounds an OB has done, the less likely they are to get hit with a medical malpractice suit....

A year in Mexico taught me the difference between health care, and litigious based care, and suddenly the huge difference in health care expenditures for worse outcomes made sense...☹️