likoma

[eltrut420]

ok thanks for taking care of the situation spyder. Heres what i got. in my 55 i have 3 pairs of afra likoma.These were sold to me as red top dwarfs. but thats a weird thing since its not really a name or whatever. im gonna get some pics on here shortly and hopesomeone can give a positive id. anyhow i went to pull out 2 females that have been holding for a week and well all three of them are holding. i have some heavy rockwork in there so i pulled all 3 out. i had a 20 long setup with a divider in it but i had to just throw all 3 fish in the tank and hope they dont kill each other. so my first question is what do i need to do to minimize this aggression or whatever. the only other option was a 20 tall growout tank but that has like 25 1" fish in it so i figured that wouldnt be good for a holding female. last night i saw a little chasing but i havent seen the fish at all today so im hopin thats a good thing. i just put a bunch of clay pots in there for cover for them. im thinkin some pvc would have be better.


any thoughts ?

[why_spyder]

If they were sold to you as 'Red Top Dwarf' without a location, it is impossible to know what location they came from. Hai Reef, Chimate, Chewere and other locations with 'Red Top' variants are next to impossible to tell apart.

As far as keeping holding females with fry/juvies - I do it quite a bit. My holding females just ignore most of the fry and the fry tend to act as dithers a litle bit (their numbers making it harder for females to focus on one fish). Lots of cover will also help holding females hide from one another.

[eltrut420]

ya i still get locations confused. so how important are locations anyhow. The fish i have are all the same fish without a doubt. and the guy i got them from knows what hes doing. he had like 50 tanks goin at once in his house. he was just being cool helping me get a species that i could get my feet wet with as far as breeding. He just called them red top dwarfs and i searched all over the net and likoma was the closest thing i found. i aslo read that red top isnt really a name but somethin pet shops put out there to make the fish sound different. i dunno i guess im confused. how do you breed a species with a location that you know is where they were collected and not end up with inbred fish. i know in mammals it can happen in the 2nd generation. even some plant species you need a broad spectrum of dna in order to avoid mutations and expression of phenotypes more often thatn others. line breeding in fish im guessing is along the same lines as this. so whats with the emphasis on location. if you order 10 fish caught at a specofoc location are you assuming that there is o genetic drift in that location? from what ive read that lake is over fished and has alot of stress on it whhich would lead me to beleive that the chance for that is high.I guess i dont understand it all to much.

[why_spyder]

The importance of location is to maintain geographical integrity. An example:

C. afra Cobue and C. afra Likoma are technically the same species (C. afra) but if you were to cross them some fry would look like Cobue, some like Likoma, and some a combination of both (theoretically). This mess would really get bad if one of these fry were to be passed on as pure C. afra Cobue or C. afra Likoma.

As far as genetic drift, many of the locations are geographically isolated by sand, rocks, and/or deep open water. Isolation will prevent neighboring locations from mingling unless those barriers are removed. Larry Johnson could give you better real world examples.

So the importance of location is to make sure that when you pass on fry that the next generation is an accurate representation of that population in the lake.

The words 'Red Top' are used to describe the coloration of the dorsal fin. They are useless as far as naming a species name however. I would love to see words like those disappear.