Today I went to my LFS and I saw two seperate tanks with different color jag morphs, one tank had jag's that had a very dark yucky brownish color, and the other tank had jag's with a lightish color and almost had a black and white maze on their bodies?
Is there different Managuense Morphs?
- Thread starter PredatoryFishRocks
- Start date
There are many factors that can have an effect on the pattern and color of jags. If your dealing with wild jags, the location they were collected from can influence certain characteristics. Although I assume your question probably refers to the typical captive jags. In this case water quality can affect the fishes color. If the jag is stressed often times they will take on a darker color with a less defined spotted pattern. Jags can even become almost completely black in color due to stress. If you've ever looked in a petsmart jag tank you'll almost certainly see what I mean. Another factor is the age and maturity of the jag. Older fish generally display more of a spotted pattern, unlike younger fish that usually have some Vertical "bars" in their pattern that haven't broken up into spots. Then of course there is a difference between the sexes, males usually have more spots and females usually have more of the vertical barring in their patterns. Every fish will have variation on patterning when compared to another fish of the same species. Anyways hope this helps answer your question.
I've seen both of those colorations before in sub to adult Jags aswell. Jags with more of a goldish green body with larger black patterns and Jags that have white bodies with smaller black patterns. I've also seen Jags with a purple-ish hue to there bodies also. I do believe at some piont they were regional variants not happenstance.
cichniss;4847713; said:
Well said. As for morph, there is a gold morph and a xanthic morph. Both, while well documented, are underrepresented in the hobby atm I'm afraid.
The strains available now are from Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico and Florida. There are also jags in Costa Rica and else where. The ways in which each population differs from the next eludes me but maybe someone else can elaborate.
I picked up a short bodied Jag at Petsmart this week.....he was seriously 1/2 the lenght of his same age tank mates and round like a parrot......unfortunately he may have gotten eaten by my dwarf pike (Regani) since I havent seen him today.