the beginning

[wickedglass]

just thought I'd throw up the pic that started it all for me. back in about 1990 I'd come across a picture that got me interested in apistos.
It's an image in a book, which I found on my travels around fish places. One of my faves was at the old Thomastown market, where and old guy called Charlie sold aquarium supplies. He had a lot of crappy old equipment and stuff, but it seemed like a treasure trove to me at the time, and in burrowing through his stuff I found some books ... the first one from 1967 and the others from the following years. the first one was in good nick, but the other two were wrapped in plastic and had never been opened and read!
the books were H. Axelrod's "breeding aquarium fish" and they provided the basic background reading (some of it hopelessly outdatated) for many of the fish I have bred over the years .... but also a source of much drooling over various species I was compiling into a wanted list.
as soon as I saw this particular fish, known in 1967 as the mysterious Apistogramma U2, I was hooked into trying to find it, and it wasn't until a few years later that I finally managed to purchase a pair...
anyway, here's the beginning of my affair with Apistos

[fishgeek]

what is that chris
has the fat head of a cacatoides but none of the belly stripes?

is it prehaps a wild form before we ot the highly coloured fish
or a jurensis or similar?

andrew
ps your showing your age

[wickedglass]

here it is.
In the book they're actually called A. borelli (sic), something which I've found to be the case in a few older books. But the common name Axelrod uses is "The Cockatoo" ... since then the name got changed to A. cacatuoides.
here's a couple more pix of a male and a female out of the book

Following images scanned from
H. Axelrod, "breeding aquarium fish", 1967, TFH Publications
Image by Ruda Zukal

[wickedglass]

if compared to this more recent image of a wild cockie, I'd have to day you're absolutely correct.

http://www.petsforum.com/characin/ca...a_1b_m_640.jpg

[Robdog]

The first pic of an apisto I saw was also of the humble A. cacatuoides. It was in a great book that I still have and re-read with a beautiful brown discus on the front and I remember paying a bomb for it. Where were you then ASA???
I didn't care about discus then because everything I read seemed to put them in the "too difficult" catagory.
Saw this bloke and fell in love.



p.s Nobody is allowed to quote my last sentence!

[bushie]

hey robdog,

Saw this bloke and fell in love.
p.s Nobody is allowed to quote my last sentence!

now would I do that

not that I have any problem with you falling in love with anything,
but..........it is male!
oh well, each to their own