Originally described in 1910 by Eigenmann & Hildebrand, they are found in the major drainages of Columbia. This relatively small fish will grow to a size of 14cm. The females are a little smaller growing to about 11cm. Theirs mouths are turned down, which places them into the Geophagus genus. They love to dig and sift through your substrate but they really are not into moving it around. The body of the male is 80% covered with metallic green spots and his body is a cream colour with a black horizontal band down the lateral line. The female looks the same but has fewer metallic spots. They are known in the hobby as the Red Hump Eartheater.
I acquired a bag of juveniles in Sarnia at the local club’s auction. They were under an inch in size and were placed into a ten gallon tank for conditioning. I fed a mix of flake foods with small pellets and occasionally threw in some freeze dried foods for flavour. Once they got up to an inch and a half I put them into a growout tank with other various cichlids, some African – well, mostly African. They did fine and grew quickly in the 100 gallon tank. Originally starting with 5 fry I had 3 make it to adults. I am surprised by their aggression towards each other. With one male and two females I figured I was well set up for breeding.
My growout tank became a breeding tank for the
The male is very aggressive and is ready to harass the females at any given moment. I believe that an overly stocked tank will help lower the aggression level of the male just by the fact that he can’t see them all the time. The next spawning was a few weeks later. I was surprised at the behaviour of the female, she was on a rampage and that other female just couldn’t get far enough away from her. I think the constant head butting with the female and the aggressive advances from the male were too much for her and I found her one morning, dead and picked over. To top off the day the female must have celebrated by having a breakfast of baby steindachneri.
Well I was upset and irritated so I proceeded to forget about these guys for a bit, just to cool down. Now that the conditions were perfect and nothing else in the tank bothered them, breeding started and with no problem, a nice big mouthful appeared and with a little harassing from the male and the good instincts of the female, not to mention her ability to stay behind him or under something. I was rewarded with a brood of 26 fry the day after I put her into a 3 gallon tank. I made daily water changes of 50% from the parents’ tank for a week then down to a 20% change once a week. The fry easily took crushed flake and high protein powder, and are growing nicely.
The female has spawned again with another big mouthful and I was pleasantly surprised to find her releasing the fry into the 100 gallon tank and taking them back up whenever anyone came too close. I watched this for a while and then caught and stripped her before she released them for good in the big tank. Just like in the wild their odds of making it in there are very small. I am quite fond of these