If you are looking for something a little out of the ordinary and you have a 20 gallon tank begging for something to be put into it, and you are willing to do frequent water changes and you have copious amount of duckweed, water sprite or java moss then Allotoca dugesi might be the fish for you.
The fish that I am keeping a lucky enough to have breed is Allotoca dugesi melanistic. This is from the collection of Ivan dibble in 2000 from Rancho ell Molino. Allotoca dugesi has the common name of golden bumble bee goodeid because the males are golden yellow and the females are also yellow with a black middle. The melanistic form the males rear two thirds of the body are black with the front third being a pale yellow. The females are much like the normal form just the bellies are a little blacker.
As with most of the goodieds the Allotoca dugesi is found in the highlands of Mexico and can withstand temperatures in the low 50’s to high 70’s, but are happier if the temperature is kept around 68 degrees. This is a robust animal with females growing to about 3 1/2 inches and males about 2 1/2 inches. One of the reasons the need for plants and space is the females can be a little hard on the males or smaller fish. I had to remove my Corydoras because their fins were becoming rather split and missing!
These fish are big eaters, much like New World cichlids. I feed mine high quality flakes, brine shrimp both frozen and decapsulated, blood worms and chopped earth worms. They need to be feed at least two times a day if not more or they will fade very quickly. My breeding group consisted of three females and two large males and one smaller male. The smaller mail disappeared after a few weeks. When the females are gravid, and you can very well tell, are huge, to the point of if they eat any more they are going to split. Everything I have been reading on the web tells me that they are not fry eaters but, I beg to differ. Like I said the females are huge and after they release the fry they are about half of what they were. Yet the fry are a just slightly larger than guppy fry and number under twenty, with most of my spawns are under ten.
I have never seen them chasing fry and I have never found any dead fry so I conclude that somebody must be eating them. My 20 gallon tank that they are breeding in is about 3/4 full o f java moss with a covering of Salvina at the surface.
The gestation period is about 55 to 60 days depending on temperature. The fry grow fairly quickly on a diet of decapsulated brine shrimp eggs and crushed spirulina flakes. The sexes can be distinguished afer about one week with the males “coloring up” very nicely. These fry are big eaters and must be maintained in QH2O. I did 50% water changes every week in a ten gallon tank with a sponge filter added.
Because of the range of temperature these fish will thrive in, I think they will make an excellent candidate for one of my out door ponds in the late Spring.