any body know what this is?
- Thread starter cichlidgirl
- Start date
I just did a web search of protomelas annecens then clicked on images and it really is close, maybe a good match. It has the irregular black bars, the head shape, small mouth, when a juvie the male would have had the silvery/gold look of the female with black vertical barring and the black horizontal barring . I would say a 80-90 percent match, maybe higher . Wow, thanks guys, i think we have a winner. Woiw, all those other websites could not get this close. Good work.
I dont believe it is c. moori. It has c. moori like traits but is not a exact match. Possiable to be in the same family of fish. I noticed the protomelas annectens is listed as formerly known as Cyrtocara annectens and has two different collection points that look slightly different from each other. I believe it is either a protomelas annectens or a c. moori hybrid. Im leaning more toward the annectens. I saw several pics of the fish during a websearch that showed the strange shaped vertical barring that my fish has. Narrow at the top (almost pointed) widens in the center and then narrows at the bottom again. A Elongated diamond pattern. I had never saw that with any fish during my searching before. I saw it in two of the 10 or so pics i found for annectens.
Dr. Paul Loiselle stayed over at my house a couple of years back when he spoke at our fish club. I had some C. moorii and he commented that mine were genuine but that he had seen a lot of hybrids lately. That was a couple of years ago, so I would imagine that the hybrids are widespread by now. On another note, he also told me that the majority of red empress available on the market are a hybrid and not the real ones. I did have some real ones in the same tank according to Dr. Loiselle.
thanks for that info. I wonder what they are breeding them with ? I was doing some researching on annectens and found a c. moori profile page that listed some similar species at the bottom of the page. It has pics of both fish next to each other and info, example it says that the accectens has gold eyes as my fish does in this pic sans the blue lighting. check out the link and let me know what you all think ?
http://www.wetpetz.com/bludolphin.html
Here is my fish again for comparison:
http://www.wetpetz.com/bludolphin.html
Here is my fish again for comparison:
I would say the difficultly on a definitive identification comes from the lack of comparison fish. I would keep it written down and check the web over time and see what you can find...
Thanks for the pic, notice your fish is developing a slight hump on the forehead. mine shows no hump development and it has a smooth very rounded angle to the head area. The type of scales look similar though, the pattern i mean.
