Apistogramma Behavior

Hi all
Relatively new to fish keeping (less than a year) and my LFS got a shipment of apistogramma cacatuoides, I've always been interested in these and had been trying to decide what dwarf cichlids to put in my community tanks for a while now. Unfortunately when they arrived it appeared that they only had males.

My tanks is pretty heavily planted an when I added the fish he swam around a little but now he spends all day hiding and the only food I've seen him touch is blood worms. He hangs around in a dark corner and keeps making me think he's dead as he's harder to find than my khuli loaches.
Is it normal for him to be hiding for the first few days or should I be worried? and should I try to keep the lights off longer or is that going to hamper his ability to find food?

p.s. If he turns out fine and healthy I'll be up to trade a kidney to anyone who can sell me a female, I'm really interested in trying my hand at some breeding.

 

I had a single male apisto a while back and can recall similar behaviour- he was pretty shy at first, and then spent most of his time picking at algae (?) on the back wall of my tank.
I expect he'll settle - just give him time. Mine also was a picky eater and I began soaking flake foods in garlic/ vitamin C and I think that helped.
Beautiful fish and if you can find a female, breeding would be nice to try.

 

Thanks that's reassuring, I'll try the garlic and try to just reduce things that could cause stress.

 

Mine were also shy at first and weren't so interested in food. After a couple of days they came out of their shell. They're very interactive and eat Hikari micro pellets and frozen food. They even eat out of my hand

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