I don't know that its so easy to tel variants apart.
We separate variants to keep lines pure, just in case one day, species separation is possible.
Herichthys tamasopoensis was once considered a a location variant of carpitintus, but with advances in DNA sequencing,it was able be placed as a separate species.
So mixing of variants can be deletarious, much as the random crossbrreeding of cyanocuttatus and carpintus have created hybrid mutt, non-species, before it was realized they were actually separate species. Just because two species look superficially similar, doesn't mean they are.



Above are H tamapopoensis
The same thing happened when all Paratilapia were first imported and many aquarists didn't reallize there are separate species within the genus Paratilapia.
To me, looking at these two, its obvious they are different, so just calling them Starry night cichlids, is at best shortsighted.


P polleni small spot (left) .............P andapa (right)