Carpintas Escondido??

[danotaylor]

I have kept Green Texas several times, but never grown them all the way out to True adult size. A friend of mine sent me this picture today of a pair with a massive nuchal hump.
Do Green Texas get a nuchal hump naturally or are these hybridized or perhaps even just line bred?
Cheers

 

[HUKIT]

I have a large pair that’s 7 years old and I’ve never seen one with a nuchal hump that large. Here is my largest male who’s over 7 inches. I’m guessing the his fish is a mix.

 

[danotaylor]

HUKIT hes a beautiful specimen mate. Love it!

 

[duanes]

Have only get minor nuchal humps, but they are locaion variant Laguuna Chairel, and even when spawning.

Could be a dominance issue with some other cichlid in the tank(?)

 

[danotaylor]

Thank you duanes How many natural pure strain "Texas" varieties are there? Are "blue" texas & "green" texas different localities of the same species?

 

[Jexnell]

Herichthys cyanoguttatus are commonly called Green Texas cichlid
Herichthys carpinitis are commonly called Blue Texas cichlid
They are closley related and are almost indistinguishable. One has bigger pearls vs the other is what I have heard over the years.
The catch location will really help with telling what it is as they have different ranges in Texas and Mexico.

These are both carpinitis. First one ordered from COTA and came in about 7in in size
This one I got from TUIC and raised it from a 1in fry
The darkness difference is due to the substrate in the tanks. The fish will try and blend in to its surroundings, lighter tank lighter fish. Black substrate black fish.
I never did have cyanoguttatus.

 

[duanes]

To me the term, green Texas or blue Texas mean nothing.
There is a either Herichthys cyanogutattus, H tamapopoensis, H minckleyi and the different location variants of H carpintus such as Chairel, or Escondido or Rio Hondo etc etc, and there are other species of Herichthys such as pantostictus, bartoni, tepahua, pame and steindachneri that look very unlike the Texas forms.
Each deserve their own scientific names (unless they are mutt hybrids) otherwise the aquarist really doesn't have a clue to what they he or she has.

 

[danotaylor]

Very interesting. They both would be what I have known as "green texas" & "blue texas". My local LFS often gets green texas he labels as "carpintas escondido". I have grown some in the past to 5" and they look like the one HUKIT posted & your first picture. Truly green spangles, not blue.

 

[danotaylor]

To me the term, green Texas or blue Texas mean nothing.
There is a either Herichthys cyanogutattus, H tamapopoensis, H minckleyi and the different location variants of H carpintus such as Chairel, or Escondido or Rio Hondo etc etc, and there are other species of Herichthys such as pantostictus, bartoni, tepahua, pame and steindachneri that look very unlike the Texas forms.
Each deserve their own scientific names (unless they are mutt hybrids) otherwise the aquarist really doesn't have a clue to what they he or she has.

Gotcha. So the different colored spangles in the Carpintas relate to collection point differences only then? I really the ones you pictured in post #4 as well...

 

[duanes]

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)