What type of frontosa

All will develop a hump roughly the same size and achieve a similar over all length so it's simply a matter of preference and availability.


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Better question with frontosa is what do you want to afford. I think even what people would call the cheaper or lesser species are really great looking. I use to have a group of 10 frontosa myself.

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All male Cyphos have big nuchal hump when they mature specially the alpha, although base on my observation Burundi has the biggest nuchal hump. HTH!

Actually, there is a difference. There are technically two different species, C. frontosa, whether six stripe (what most people call Burundi) or seven stripe (Kigoma) and then C. gibberosa, Moba, Mpimbwe, etc. Gibberosa tend to have smaller, slower growing humps. Some gibberosa ultimately develop pretty large humps, but many to most, including big males, don't develop quite the same huge, bulbous humps you see in a lot of big frontosa. On average frontosa have the more exaggerated humps.

The trade off is that gibberosa are generally more blue, often much more blue, which is why they're more expensive. Same deal here, doesn't mean there aren't some very blue frontosa, especially collected from certain locations, but all in all gibberosa are generally better color and price reflects that.

...and as an afterthought, a lot of the common frontosa out there will start out with more blue as 2 inch juvies than they end up with as adults. Again, this is not a 100% rule and there are exceptions, depending on origin of the fish, but it's pretty common. On the other hand, gibberosa typically get more blue with maturity.

To illustrate the hump thing, here's an image search for gibberosa. How many have the really bulbous humps? A few, but not most of them, not even the big boy the guy is holding with two hands about seven rows down on the page. And of those on the page with the more bulbous humps, at least three are actually frontosa, not gibberosa.

Compare to this frontosa.