im not an expert by anymeans but i do own a cichla either mono or orino still to yound but when i got my pbass which was sorta impulse because i always wanted one but never got around to researchung it but i had an idea of size diet behaviour etc. i was looking on fishbase.org and most pics werent shown but i believe they had a photo of a cichla with no markings. i have seen a few like intermedia and ocellaris photos where some have markings and some dont. so it may be relarted to genes, or to area.