Description
This rare and subtle beauty comes from the rio Orinoco in Venezuela, and is a fantastic golden yellow. This coloration covers its entire body as well as its fins, and it has a broken lateral line. The lower half, and sometimes even the upper half of the body are covered over by a pale iridescent blue, and the name “rotpunkt” comes from the red dots that show up in between the blue wash in the mature males. While it does not have the most incredible fins or coloration, this rare color as well as small distribution make for an exceptional addition to aquariums. From time to time it has been imported under different names, such as “Apistogramma sp. ‘Black edge’”, “Schwarzsaum”, and “Puerto Narino”. The females have a striking bumblebee pattern, with some complete and some broken vertical black bands running the length of its body.
The area of the rio Orinoco where this dwarf cichlid is collected from is very low in pH, usually between 4.5 and 6.0, and were between 25-28C in the month October in 2016. These fish are ones that you would want to keep in as close to natural conditions as possible, as they are fairly new to the hobby and have been worked with less than many other more known species. You will want to keep them in acidic water that has very low hardness, and it should be flowing at a decent rate. This species, like many others, will enjoy being in a well planted tank, and the addition of some sand and botanical elements will be appreciated. In the book Fishes of the Orinoco in the Wild Ivan Mikolji mentions that some plants that they are found with include Eriocaulon sp. and Tonina sp., which are both quite fun genera of plants to keep.
Apistogramma “rotpunkt” should be kept in a naturalistic environment, and any tank mates that are not its own species should probably be a small tetra.Fishes of the Orinoco in the Wild also mentions that they are found with Astyanax integer, which is a rare fish to find in the hobby in its own right, but gets to be about 2 inches long, so a tetra that reaches lengths around this would be suitable.Some bloodfin tetras might be an interesting choice, as they are also a fairly subtle fish that will not steal the spotlight from the delightful cichlids that are at the bottom of the tank. To foster natural behaviors and optimal coloration from these fish, you will want to keep them in tanks as close to their natural environment as possible. These fish ship individually bagged.
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