Research Notes - Keeping Rheoheros lentiginosus

The R. lentiginosus page on cichlidae.com is now open for access! So now all the information there, the ones I used in my research, can be used by everyone too.

I was starting to think about potential tankmates for the R. lentiginosus and had a look at some articles.

This article stood out as being of particular interest, detailing distribution of fish in Chiapas.

I parsed out only species that are found in the same localities as R. lentiginosus in Table 2 from the article, with results here. The 'count' column is how many of the six localities that R. lentiginosus was found in in this study, other species were also found in.

My plan is to look at stocklists from sellers and see what matches this list, preferably closer to the top. Note that I have not vetted whether the species here are all supposedly native to the region or if they are invasive. I have yet to decide how I want it to be done, to be honest. But that's for my journal, for research this is currently good enough.

So I was looking at TUIC and did not see anything that was found in Chiapas. I then went to TWS and did find two species currently for sale, Poecilia schenops and Xiphophorus hellerii.

Well, both P. schenops and X. hellerii seems to be native/indigenous to Mexico.

Now that my tank is cycling and getting close to being ready, I decided to do some more research on where to get R. lentiginosus. I contacted The Wet Spot (TWS) and Tangled Up in Cichlids (TUIC) and so far TWS has responded, saying they source their R. lentiginosus from Indonesia...

That is certainly a red flag. I did not go through all this trouble potentially obtaining fish of unclear lineage. Other times I may not care, but this time I do.

Props to TWS though, they were fully honest with me, disclosing not only where they got the fish from, but also what are the better options - i.e. TUIC and a place I had not checked before, or even known about, Cichlids of the Americas (CotA).

So I emailed CotA and they responded with something interesting - their R. lentiginosus was F1 (i.e. the progeny of wild-caught fish) and were originally from Rio Puyacatengo. Really cool!

Goes to show research can be never-ending and there is so many hidden resources out there, just gotta keep searching. Because now I can get fish originally sourced from two localities.

I spent some time yesterday watching some videos of R. lentiginosus on cichlidae.com and must say, learnt some more about these cichlids. They seem to like to overturn rocks and leaves in search of prey. Good to know.

From here on, the details surrounding obtaining and keeping R. lentiginosus will be kept track of here.

Further research will continue to be added to this thread.

A bit more about the bark/filter floss for the wavemaker/internal filter, and even my choice of them and the sponge filter, I posted in two different forums why, see here and here.

Okay, so let's look at the setup. What I need to get are as follows:

• Aquarium

• Lid/hood

• Light

• Stand

• Nitrifiers (can take from existing tank)

• Biomedia (more MarinePure?)

• Heater

• Sponge filter

• Air pump

• Hose

• 2x Wavemaker/internal filter

• Filter floss

• Bark (like, wood)

• String or something to tie the filter floss and bark to the wavemakers/internal filter

• River sand

• Gravel

• Smooth rocks/pebbles

• Larger rocks (preferably smooth)

• Driftwood, specifically smaller branches

• Mineral-heavier rock

• Algae wafer

• Autofeeder

• Cichlid food

Another good source of potential information is in fact... Youtube.

I was searching for 'rheoheros lentiginosus 'rio chacamax'' there and got videos like this, showing the fish' natural habitat. From the video, they do indeed seem to enjoy open areas. The rocks also do tend to have a lot of aufwuch growing on them, which may be a source of nutrition for the fish here. Some further digging is probably needed to find that out, which can better help with my setup.

With all that, it is time to plan out an aquarium.

Given they are only 'moderately aggressive', which by cichlid standards is very mild, I am considering getting eight. Whether from TUIC or TWS, they are listed as 1.5-2", so not too big to begin with. My plan is to upgrade in the future, so a relatively smaller tank right now should suffice.

With that said, I would not go any lower than 30 gallons in my mind, and if that's the case I'd go for something long and wide, but not high. 40 gallons may be more preferable at this point. Final tank size, I have yet to imagine, but I'd probably try for 150 gallons or more, depending on how things go and how many I have then.

My idea is to create a generally higher flow rate across the tank, perhaps from one side to another, though that's harder to create without a sump or canister filter. An AIO may work. I could also have a wavemaker, just need to make sure to wrap it up with filter floss to prevent anything from being sucked in.

I would want an air pump to aerate the tank, and probably will try to keep the tank at around 25 C or so.

For the substrate, I'd mix about 90-95% river sand and 5-10% small pebbles/gravel. I want to have some nice pieces of driftwood with holes/hovels in them to one side where there is lower flow so that they can nest. Perhaps two sections if space permit, just to give more choice. Then just heaps of branches of various sizes to offer more spaces to explore. The rest I'd keep it rather open and filled more with rocks.

Setting up the environment will take some time. I am thinking of letting a lot of algae grow, then hoping for a lot of invertebrates too. I would probably try to purposefully introduce snails, and probably some cheap feeder shrimps. Aquatic insects would probably be too hard.

That's the gist of the idea for now.

So where am I now? Well to be honest, I found a lot more information on cichlidae.com, specifically here.

I don't want to give all the information available there on here for free, because well the site is great and they need all the money they can get to sustain their activities. So instead, I'd recommend you subscribe to them if you are particularly interested in cichlids. It is absolutely worth it! I got a nifty book from them too. No sponsorship here by the way, just to be clear.

Some additional information of importance from cichlidae.com:

• Females are about 5cm shorter than males.

• Males grow a small hump, females tend to be more colorful.

• They often inhabit clear, cool rivers.

• Temperature range in the wild is 22 to 34 C.

• River beds typically consists of boulders, rocks, shale, gravel, sand, silt, logs, marl, and a few times mud. Regularly there is no vegetation.

• Forages in moderately fast flowing current, stay away from very strong current, not often found in stagnant current.

• pH range is 7 to 8.5.

• Not aggressive during feeding.

• Tends to nest in slower flow areas, with holes in wood or caves raised above the riverbed preferred.

• Mating involves females at their nest site entrances, and males patrolling. Females will always pick a male bigger than themself as a mate.

• Eggs take two days to hatch, and wriggler phase is four days.

• Juveniles forage in faster current, as with parents.

• During the whole breeding process parent colors change too - can potentially signal different points that an aquarist can look out for.

• They are generally moderately aggressive.

• In the aquarium. Water chemistry in the aquarium seems to be better if mimics natural conditions. Readily feeds on commercial food. Do not deal well with lower oxygen conditions. Do not deal well with higher temperatures.

A lot of good information!

Again, cichlidae.com is a wealth of information, and from my own perspective, is very trustworthy. So yeah, highly recommended to fork out the money to subscribe to them. Even the information above is not all that was available. It's just what I picked out that was directly relevant to me right now.