Blue Cheek Dwarf Cichlid

About

Found across a surprisingly broad range of water types in the western Amazon basin, Apistogramma eunotus turns up in blackwater, clearwater, and whitewater tributaries of the Ucayali, Amazon, Yavarí, and Japurá rivers in Peru and Brazil. That adaptability to varied water chemistry is one of its more useful traits in the aquarium, giving keepers some flexibility. Males are the larger and more colorful sex, as is typical for the genus, while females stay notably smaller and take on a yellowish hue when guarding a spawn. Breeding follows the classic Apistogramma cave-spawning pattern. Eggs are deposited on the ceiling of a small cavity or crevice, and the female takes full charge of the eggs and fry from that point on. In smaller tanks she can become genuinely aggressive in this role, and removing the male after spawning is often the safer option. For general community keeping, captive-raised fish settle in far more readily than wild-caught specimens, which do better in a quieter setup with small dither fish like pencilfish to make them feel secure. Mixing this species with other Apistogramma is generally not recommended. It sits within a taxonomically complex group, and hobbyists often track collection locality carefully to avoid accidental hybridization with closely related forms.