This comes up often...
Stalsbergi as the 'true' or 'original' green terror is a misconception.
The basic order is: White edged rivulatus (Ecuador) showed up in the hobby first in the 1970s. Soon, also 1970s, came wild collected gold edged rivulatus. These were given the nickname "green terror" --the question at the time was: Are they rivulatus? Meanwhile there were also photos of what are now stalsbergi circulating. 1982-- a German article called what we now call stalsbergi (Peru) 'the green terror that isn't', being a third fish different from the those originally given the nickname 'green terror' (the Ecuador white and gold edged fish). So, the question for some became is
this the true rivulatus?
---Source:
Here, article by Wayne Leibel, biologist and cichlid expert who has written more than one article to clear up the confusion.
S0-- one reason so many have it wrong is at one time stalsbergi was considered the true
rivulatus-- not the same thing as the true green terror. In fact, some older books and articles (some of which I have or had) had photos of the Peruvian fish (stalsbergi) captioned as the "true rivulatus" and from this a number of hobbyists concluded and spread the idea it was also the true green terror (which, based on this, I also started to think at one point)
. BUT-- the Peruvian fish turned out
not to be rivulatus, so it's been named stalsbergi. The Ecuador fish is rivulatus.
There's also another similar, reportedly slightly smaller, fish from Ecuador: Andinoacara blombergi.
Imo I don't have an issue with calling stalsbergi green terrors also. It's just a nickname and, according to sources I've seen, some countries don't call any of them green terrors. But it would be more accurate to call stalsbergi Peru green terrors if you want to distinguish them from rivulatus, not the 'original' or the 'true' green terror.
Congrats on your new fishy.
