Apistogramma Hongsloi Apistogramma hongsloi

Quick Stats

Tank Setup

The Apistogramma hongsloi is the red apisto — a fish that earns its common name only when conditions are right. A male hongsloi in breeding colour is one of the most spectacular dwarf cichlids in the hobby: an intense tomato-red face, throat, and shoulder, a yellow-orange body, and red-edged ventral and anal fins. The same fish in poor water or on a poor diet is a pale pink-grey fish that you would walk past at the shop. Hongsloi is rated Medium difficulty for one reason: it needs softer, more acidic water than cacatuoides, borellii, or macmasteri. If you can commit to the water chemistry, the species is otherwise straightforward — a harem cave breeder in a 20 gallon, eating the same frozen-and-pellet diet as its cousins.

Maintain water parameters within: temperature 24–28°C, pH 4.5–6.5, hardness 1–8 dGH. Hongsloi comes from the lower Meta and Orinoco drainages in Colombia and Venezuela — classic blackwater habitat, the same soft acidic water that agassizii comes from. Captive-bred fish will live at pH 6.8 and GH 8 without dying on you, but they will not colour up, they will not breed, and they will slowly lose condition over months. I run my hongsloi colony at 26°C, pH 5.8, GH 3 — straight RO reconstituted with a small amount of Seachem Equilibrium and buffered with catappa leaves — and the males turn the colour you see in show photos. If your tap water is liquid rock (pH 8.0+, GH 18+), do not keep hongsloi without an RO unit; you are setting yourself up for failure. Borellii is the apisto for hard tap water; hongsloi is not.

Set up the tank with a fine sand substrate (1–2 mm pool filter sand or play sand, 3–5 cm deep), driftwood, leaf litter (Indian almond leaves, generous — 2–3 per 10 gallons, refreshed monthly), and dense planting along the back and sides. The leaf litter is non-negotiable for hongsloi — the tannins and humic acids they release are what stabilize the pH in the right range and trigger spawning behaviour. The non-negotiables also include caves: one cave per female, plus one spare. Coconut shells with a 1.5 cm entrance hole, half-buried flower pots turned on their side, or slate stacks all work — the entrance must be just large enough for the female to enter and the male to be excluded. Apistogramma are sifters; they will sand-sift all day looking for food, so gravel disqualifies a tank. Hongsloi males are jumpers when spooked — a tight-fitting lid is non-negotiable.

Tank Mates

Apistogramma hongsloi are peaceful for cichlids — until they spawn. A guarding female will attack any fish that comes within a body-length of her cave, including fish three times her size. Plan tank mates around the spawning reality, not the resting state, and around the water chemistry: any tank mate must tolerate pH below 6.5 and GH below 8 dGH.

Compatible tank mates include: tetras that tolerate 24–28°C in soft acidic water (Ember Tetra, Rummy-nose Tetra, Cardinal Tetra, Neon Tetra, Green Neon Tetra), pencil fish (Nannostomus, especially trifasciatus and marginatus), Corydoras (especially dwarf species like habrosus or pygmaeus, and the soft-water Corydoras adolfoi), Otocinclus, and peaceful mid-water schooling fish. I keep my hongsloi colony with a school of Cardinal Tetras and a group of Corydoras habrosus; the tetras act as dither fish that signal “no predators above”, and the corys occupy the bottom without competing for the caves. Avoid housing with other Apistogramma species (they will hybridise or fight — hongsloi hybridises readily with macmasteri in particular, since they are sister species), large aggressive cichlids, bottom-dwelling predators like Synodontis catfish, and any fish large enough to eat a 5 cm female. Livebearers (guppies, platies, mollies) are not compatible — they need hard alkaline water that will kill hongsloi over time.

The harem structure matters: one male with two to three females per territory, in a 20 gallon long with broken sight lines. Two males in a 20 gallon will fight — sometimes to death, especially when a female is in spawning colour and the male's red coloration ramps up territorial aggression. If you want multiple males, you need a 4-foot tank (40 gallon breeder or larger) with visual barriers between each male's territory. A sexed group of 1M:3F is the standard starter colony; the females will establish a pecking order among themselves, and the dominant female will spawn first. Hongsloi males are slightly less aggressive toward each other than cacatuoides males, but the one-male-per-territory rule still applies.

Diet & Feeding

Apistogramma hongsloi are micro-predators. In the wild they eat insect larvae, small crustaceans, and worms pulled from the sand. In the aquarium they accept frozen bloodworm, frozen brine shrimp, live blackworms, live baby brine shrimp, and high-quality micro pellets (I use New Life Spectrum Thera+A 0.5 mm or Fluval Bug Bites Cichlid Mini). Flake is accepted but is the worst thing you can feed a hongsloi — the species' entire appeal is the red colouration, and that colour is built on a high-carotenoid, high-protein diet. A flake-only hongsloi is a grey-pink fish with a faint red wash on the shoulder; the same fish on a frozen-and-live diet for six weeks is a different animal entirely.

Feed small amounts twice daily. A female guarding eggs or fry will eat very little; do not panic if she refuses food for a week — this is normal. Target-feed with a baster or long tweezers; hongsloi learn to recognise their keeper and will take food from your fingers within a few weeks. The red pigmentation in the male's face and shoulder is directly tied to dietary carotenoids — if you want the show-colour red, supplement with frozen krill, cyclops, or a color-specific pellet (Hikari Cichlid Excel, New Life Spectrum Cichlid Formula) twice a week. Live blackworms are the single biggest lever on hongsloi colour; six weeks of daily blackworm will transform a mediocre male into a show fish.

The two colour forms in the hobby — the “Red Neck” hongsloi (bright red-orange head, throat, and shoulder with a yellowish body) and the line-bred “Super Red” form (where the red covers the entire front half of the body and often extends down the ventral fins) — are not different species. They are selectively bred colour morphs of the same fish, and a low-quality diet will mute both forms dramatically. If you paid for Super Red stock, do not feed flake — you are paying for colour and then starving it. Cross-breeding Red Neck and Super Red produces intermediate colour in the F1 generation; line-breeding separates the traits within 2–3 generations. Diet is the single biggest lever on colour intensity within either morph.

Common Health Issues

The two conditions I see most in Apistogramma are Hexamita (intestinal flagellates) and bacterial gill disease. Hexamita shows up as white, stringy, buoyant faeces, weight loss despite feeding, and a sunken belly. Treat with metronidazole — either in food (250 mg per 100 g of food for 7 days) or as a bath (500 mg per 10 litres for 7 days, in a separate hospital tank). Bacterial gill disease shows up as rapid breathing, clamped fins, and a fish hanging at the surface; treat with a broad-spectrum antibiotic in a hospital tank and address the underlying water quality. Hongsloi is more vulnerable to Hexamita than borellii or macmasteri — the soft acidic water it prefers is also ideal for many flagellate protozoans — so I run a prophylactic metronidazole food course on every newly arrived hongsloi without exception.

Ich is a constant threat because Apistogramma tanks run at 24–28°C, the upper end of the ich reproduction range. The standard heat-and-salt treatment is risky: pushing temperature to 30°C to defeat ich will stress your hongsloi and may trigger bacterial infections. I treat ich in Apistogramma tanks with formalin/malachite green (Rid-Ich or similar) at 75% of the label dose, holding temperature at 28°C. Copper-based treatments are toxic to dwarf cichlids — do not use them. Hongsloi's red coloration also makes fungus and bacterial fin rot more visible than on other apistos — any whitish edge on the ventral fins is the first sign of a water-quality slip; do a 50% water change immediately and recheck ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

Prevention is straightforward: weekly 25–30% water changes with dechlorinated, temperature-matched water at the correct pH and GH (do not crash the pH with a hard-tap-water change — mix RO), no ammonia, no nitrite, nitrate below 20 ppm. Apistogramma tolerate nitrate worse than tetras — a tetra will shrug off 40 ppm nitrate, a hongsloi will lose colour, stop breeding, and become disease-prone. Quarantine new fish for four weeks in a hospital tank before adding them to a colony. Lifespan in good conditions is 3–5 years, with the upper end coming from cooler tanks (24–26°C) rather than the 28°C upper limit. Wild-caught hongsloi typically arrive carrying internal parasites and the early stages of Hexamita; treat prophylactically and do not skip quarantine.

Breeding

Apistogramma hongsloi are cave-spawners and one of the more rewarding dwarf cichlids to breed in captivity, precisely because the male's breeding colour is the payoff for getting the water right. The female initiates spawning: she picks a cave, turns bright yellow with black markings, and leads the male to the entrance — and this is when the male's red coloration intensifies to its full show form, often within hours. A typical spawn is 40–80 eggs, deposited on the roof or wall of the cave. The male leaves after spawning; the female tends the eggs exclusively. Hongsloi is moderately reliable for first-spawn females — not as bulletproof as borellii, but more reliable than cacatuoides or agassizii.

Eggs hatch in 48–72 hours at 26°C. The female will move the wrigglers to a pre-dug pit in the sand, then to another pit, then another — every 8–12 hours for the first three days. Once the fry are free-swimming (day 5–7 post-hatch), the female herds them around the tank in a tight school, gill-flaring and charging anything that approaches. The male guards the perimeter — and remains in full red coloration throughout the 3–4 week brood-care period, which is the main reason hongsloi breeders keep the species. In a harem setup, he will rotate between the territories of his females, ramping up to red at each cave and fading back to muted colours between visits.

Feed the fry infusoria for the first three days, then graduate to live baby brine shrimp. They grow quickly on BBS — 1 cm in four weeks, sexable at three months, sexually mature at six months. The most common mistake is feeding flake or pellet too early; Apistogramma fry need live food for the first two weeks or they starve slowly. A single pair in a 10 gallon species-only tank will produce 30–50 survivors per spawn with no intervention beyond water changes. Breeding for colour forms is straightforward — Red Neck to Red Neck produces Red Neck; Super Red to Super Red produces Super Red; Red Neck to Super Red produces a mix, with roughly 60% Super Red phenotype and 40% Red Neck phenotype in the F1 generation, assuming a heterozygous Red Neck parent. Line-breeding for the Super Red form is well-established in the hobby; the trait is stable across generations, and Super Red lines command a noticeable price premium in the trade — which is the economic reason many breeders work with this species specifically.

Frequently Asked Questions