Please help identify

troublesum

Dovii
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Dec 28, 2007
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Astoria, NY
Now that i see its growth i'm back to Gold Barred Midas i had a few from TUIC and my 12in male i had looked just like that.
But the Africa thing is still throwing me off.
Maybe a Amp got released in one of the lakes and hooked up with a tilapia
 
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LAQGUY

Feeder Fish
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Jul 12, 2024
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Now that i see its growth i'm back to Gold Barred Midas i had a few from TUIC and my 12in male i had looked just like that.
But the Africa thing is still throwing me off.
Maybe a Amp got released in one of the lakes and hooked up with a tilapia
It’s not from the wild it came from one of our farms. In an African cichlid shipment.
 

LAQGUY

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Jul 12, 2024
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It’s not from the wild it came from one of our farms. In an African cichlid shipment.
Actually looking today and collecting more and more over the last week. I have found a lot of Amphs that are throwing me off.
 

LAQGUY

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Jul 12, 2024
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I’m leaning more towards Amphilophus hogaboomorum he is showing more color now, bit of red under the chin and gills as well as the orange pectoral fins.
 
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Hybridfish7

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I’m leaning more towards Amphilophus hogaboomorum he is showing more color now, bit of red under the chin and gills as well as the orange pectoral fins.
Well with the barring it's not chancho/zaliosus at least, viridis/astorquii/globosus/supercilius/tolteca/the other 10+ undescribed proposed species aren't in the hobby to my knowledge, obviously not pure labiatus, and it's not yellow/snout too long so it's not amarillo, so that leaves us with (in regards to pure species), citrinellum, xiloaensis, flaveolus, and hoga. All of these have orange chins, yellow/orange pectoral fins, and 7 bars + a dot on the peduncle.

Hoga, xiloa and citrinellum are basically identical/only really distinguished from eachother by location, as hoga is endemic to one river in Honduras, whereas (what is currently described as) citrinellum is native throughout the main great lakes in Nicaragua and through most of northern Costa Rica. And then of course xiloaensis is only native to lake xiloa. Flaveolus is a weird one because its diagnosis compares it against chancho and astorquii... which is a pretty clear process of elimination in the hobby if you only had chancho and flaveolus. So again that becomes a matter of locality. Dan at COTA and sometimes wetspot are the only ones I know of selling/sourcing pure Amphilophus. As you may know Dan is no longer in operation but may still wholesale to some stores. He sends mixed boxes to stores, usually only a few of each species and probably not enough for another retailer to use as broodstock, and for what they're worth I don't think they'd leave the labels off.

Essentially, again, without locality info or a species label you can't 100% tell what this particular fish is. More than likely if you got 12 of them at roughly that size as "bycatch" in a shipment of mixed african cichlids they are not something with a known pedigree, and are again, likely just what we in the hobby call "midevils"-- mixed Amphilophus from back before a lot of the Amph. sp. were described, and everything was either a red devil or sometimes a midas. Purity wasn't of as much value back then, so people bred them all together.

That aside this thread has me craving chancho again...
 

LAQGUY

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I will keep this thread going with updates as there has been so many changes to the fish in the small time I have owned him. The work im doing now with these cichlids is quiet exciting and am looking forward to adding them to the discussion once they get a little more mass.
 

LAQGUY

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another update he has developed a very dark coloring and is now resembling amphilophus flaveolus this is making my head hurt lol
 

Hybridfish7

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another update he has developed a very dark coloring and is now resembling amphilophus flaveolus this is making my head hurt lol
Did you read what I wrote
 

LAQGUY

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Did you read what I wrote
Yes I did thank you everyone for the help! I met a ichtheologist from work today confirmed it is Amphilophus astorquii!! I Got a hand full I’m growing at work going to have to find a female!
 

Hybridfish7

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Yes I did thank you everyone for the help! I met a ichtheologist from work today confirmed it is Amphilophus astorquii!! I Got a hand full I’m growing at work going to have to find a female!
Amphilophus astorquii has never been imported for the aquarium trade... I don't know where your "ichthyologist" got his credentials

I hate to be a downer but it would appear you did not read what I wrote, as I stated the exact diagnostics from the people who described the species... which state there is basically no way to tell the difference between the species without known provenance or molecular data. I am done going in circles with this. Please do not sell these as astorquii if you do breed them.
 
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