A couple Heros questions.

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exodus1500

exodus1500

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Oct 20, 2013
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So, I have really started liking Heros, and I am picking up a young wild caught group of Liberifer, and also Notatus.

I already have a few Efasciatus. A green, red, gold, and 2 Rotkeils. The current ones are going to go in my display tank, but I have a couple questions about the new ones.

My plan is to breed them the Liberifer and Notatus. I want to put them into a breeding tank by themselves and put the left over unpaired ones into my display tank.

Question 1) What would be a good size tank for a breeding pair? Obviously bigger is better, but I only have so much room. I am hoping that 65's would work(36x18x24) because it would allow me to put two side by side on one of the walls.

Question 2) I am trying to nail down the naming of Heros. So from what I have read Liberifer are a "new species". I can't figure out if they simply renamed what was originally the mouth brooder Heros Severus and leaving H. Severum open for a different fish(sp. Curare?), or if they are adding Liberifer to the described species which would leave 2 mouth brooders. Every time I think I have if figured out I start to question it from reading something else. hahahaha
 
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1) Can't say it absolutely won't work, but I'd want more like a 75 gal. Ime severums can get cranky in smaller tanks and at best a 3 ft. tank is pushing it for those species imo, they can get 10-12 inches or more (unlike rotkeils, which stay somewhat smaller). Have you considered stacking tanks?

2) They're 'new' in the sense of newly classified, not newly discovered or collected. Classifying Heros species is a work in progress, so the subject has been a moving target, even among ichthyologists, meaning you need to note the date of whatever you read (older info is more likely inaccurate) and a lot of forum comments can confused or out of date.
The paper on liberifer includes a brief history of severus, including the fact that what's now liberifer had been misidentified in the past as severus:
http://www.ichthyologie.de/images/s...5/BoFB_Vol15_121_136_Staeck_and_Schindler.pdf
STAWIKOWSKI (1994) recognized the similarities between the mouthbrooding species and the characteristics given for Heros severus by KULLANDER (1986). Later KULLANDER confi rmed
that the mouthbrooder is the “real Heros severus” (STAWIKOWSKI 1994). At that time KULLANDER’s (1986) characterisation of Heros severus and his answer to STAWIKOWSKI were considered sufficient evidence for a reliable determination. Consequently, the mouthbrooding Heros from the Orinoco has commonly been thought to be Heros severus since then (e.g. STAECK & LINKE 1994; STAECK 2009, STAWIKOWSKI & WERNER 1995, 1998). The view that the mouthbrooding cichlid is Heros severus was recently challenged in an aquaristic publication (DITTRICH 2014). The examination of the holotype of H. severus by the first author confirmed that it is not identical with the mouthbrooding species, because both differ in several characteristic features (see diagnosis and discussion). The purpose of this paper is to present new information on the diagnostic characters of H. severus and to provide the formal description of the species that is repeatedly mentioned as a mouthbrooder in aquaristic publications and since almost two decades has been misidentified as H. severus.
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Thanks for your response!

As far as tank size is concerned, the room that I am planning as being the breeding room has a wall where from the corner to the window is like 6'-3". My idea is either to do 2 - 3 foot tanks right next to each other, or to do a stacked setup with longer tanks.

I might just make some custom 5' tanks and stack them. I have read that the general max size is 10" but I have seen some monster Reds.

As far as the naming, I was reading that very article yesterday. I was 90% sure that they were basically renaming the old H. Severus as Liberifer, but once in a while I questioned it. Towards the end they were comparing the Liberifer to the Severus and they showed a picture of juveniles together. I assume that the H. Severus in the picture is what I have seen being calling the "Rio Curare", and the Liberifer is simply the one mouth brooding species that has always been around?

One problem I have noticed while trying to figure out "severums" isn't necessary that people are being lazy and not doing their research(im sure that is a lot of people), but that when people do some they get overwhelmed with mis-information.
 
So would I be correct in the following:

Described:
Severus - Most likely the "rio Curare"
Liberifer - Mouth Brooder
Efasciatus - Green, Rotkeil, Appendiculatus?, the human made ones: Gold, Red
Notatus
Spurius

The others are undefined and generally just give a description, such as sp. "inirda", sp. 'Santarem'
 
I believe appendiculatus is still a valid species and the rio curare severum were officially identified as H. Severus, so 100% the same thing I think.
 
Kullander did indeed collapse Appendiculatus in with Efasciatus a while ago, I've not seen anything lately indicating it should be restore.

Though personally I think it should be (not that I claim to have more knowledge than Kullander).

Turquoise and Rotkeil's are both much smaller than Efasciatus, have a different breeding pattern (though they share it with each other), and are located hundreds of miles away from the nearest Efasciatus range with nothing inbetween. Not sure if this is a case where DNA trumps classic taxonomy though.
 
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Some still think appendiculatus should be a valid species, apparently including, at least from the comments I've read by him, cichlid writer Peter Dittrich .

It's a similar story to Cyphotilapia. Many, including some cichlid writers, expected Kigoma (7 stripe) to be classified as a separate species from frontosa. Some suggested kigoma be called "species North", a name that erroneously persists on some forums; it is not now and never was officially recognized. In any case, 7 stripe frontosa were examined to this end and remain classified as C. frontosa. Then again Ad Konings has been pretty vocal that he doesn't agree with C. gibberosa (moba, mpimbwe, etc.) being a separate species from C. frontosa, but gibberosa is the official classification.

Sometimes it just depends on who does the work of describing and classification, which particular characteristics they examine or consider important, and whether their paper is accepted. But the way taxonomic history goes, a lot is subject to change at some future date.

My take is let me know when the gene mapping gets done because gene mapping has been changing a lot of previously held views regarding diversity. Animals that appear to be identical can turn out to be genetically distinct enough to be separate species and animals that appear to be different can turn out to be genetically the same species. In fact, biologists don't always agree on what even constitutes a species and I've read science articles questioning the usefulness of 'species' in defining biological diversity in the first place, especially in view of how gene mapping is in the process of transforming our understanding of diversity.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/evo-eco-lab/species-concepts/
The species concept "problem" has pervaded for many years and will not be resolved anytime soon, if ever. The problem, of course, being that no two scientists will agree on universal definitions of what the darn things are! Taxonomist are exceptional argumentative and someone will undoubtedly disagree with everything in this article!
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