Do I have a gold saum or GT?

[Rivers2k]

Exactly. And stalsbergi = green terror with a different color pattern on its scales. Or to put it another way, there are green terrors from Ecuador, white and gold edged-- A. rivulatus, and a white edged green terror from Peru-- A. stalsbergi. And if you want the real history written by an expert, rather than the confusing opinions of non-expert hobbyists who attempt to artificially attach 'true', 'false', and 'original' to the fish nicknamed green terrors, read this article by biologist and cichlid writer Dr. Wayne Leibel.

And if you have heard that the supposedly original German fish is what is now Stalsbergi and was the so called 'original' or 'true' green terror, note in Leibel's article reference to a 1982 German article regarding the fish some imagine to be the 'true' green terror (A. stalsbergi) entitled "The Green Terror that Isn't" (emphasis mine)-- in other words, 30 some years ago from the viewpoint of this German writer, what some non-expert hobbyists now like to call the 'false' green terror (A. rivulatus) was the true green terror and what some non-expert hobbyists now like to call the 'true' green terror wasn't a green terror but was another fish. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that stalsbergi, not rivulatus, was believed by some to be the true rivulatus.

Confused yet? The point is 'green terror' is a nickname that has been or can be applied to more than one fish. Calling them 'true' or 'false' is unnecessarily artificial and confusing when the geographical origin and scientific names of the respective fish are fairly clear at this point.

Thanks for this, clears up some points for me and gives some validity to my assumptions.

 

[neutrino]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head earlier by saying a lot of it is forum based-- non-experts trying to get it straight. Not all the fault of hobbyists, though. The experts have gone back and forth over which fish is which, which fish is at which location, and which fish correspond to original photos and descriptions from the mid 1800s/early 1900s. Also a lot of what's out there on forums, articles, etc. is out of date, contradictory, and confusing and there are articles reporting on this that talk about one species but show pictures of the other (once got into an argument because for simplicity sake I referenced such an article because it was brief, but based on that someone thought I was making a different point than I was trying to make-- so I don't use that article anymore).

...To top it off, there's actually now another similar fish, A. blombergi, from a different part of Ecuador than rivulatus. If that starts showing up in the hobby the forum cycle will probably start all over again over what's the difference between stalsbergi, white edged rivulatus, and blombergi, and which is the 'real' green terror, etc. etc.