Does this little guy looks more like a Midas or a Red Devil to you guys?
- Thread starter Fanatic_Fish_Lunatic
- Start date
I’ve had some great looking mutts over the years but they’re just that. Enjoy the fish for what they are but if they spawn what you do with the fry possibly perpetuates the cycle. The problem is like you just said it yourself, you have two alleged species together in the same pond which can result in fry that may or may not be the species in question. Just as
duanes
mentioned so many Amphilophus look similar when young so they’re sold as something they be genuine or possibly not.
This thread is the reason for this stickied post.
duanes
mentioned so many Amphilophus look similar when young so they’re sold as something they be genuine or possibly not.This thread is the reason for this stickied post.
Heres a kicker.. from the late 90s until around 8 or 9ish years ago their was only 1 (commercial) global distributor of wild caught Nicaraguan fish. 1. They had exclusive global rights to collect, import, and export Nicaraguan cichlids under the 1 and only permit issued by the Nicaraguan government. No other commercial vendor had access. That means, (excluding a VERY small number of privately collected breeding stock) nearly all Nicaraguan cichlids during that time came from the same original source.
Do you know that 1. yes just 1 wild Amphilophus chancho was ever collected and exported to the US. That single wild chancho was then bred with captive chancho from Willem Heijns stock from the 90s. So all chancho in the global trade are related. Amphilophus hogaboomorum has been commercially collected & exported once, bred in captivity and distributed globally. Again, all are related. This is the same story for several other Nicaraguan Amphilophus species. Any 'Wild' Nicaraguan Amphilophus, or any Nicaraguan cichlid species for that matter, swimming in aquariums today would be pretty old. Most F1s likely are almost aging out by now as well. A few private hobbyists/breeders did a decent job of keeping lineages pure by locality for as long as they could but even those now are several generations bred back to each other.
Looking further down the rabbit hole. Only 2 vendors regularly exported new world cichlids to the European and Asian markets. TUIC was doing it first and for the longest time(29 years) as well was THE direct importer from the Central American countries, when those countries were still exporting, then COTA was the other that was exporting captive bred stock for a solid 10-12 years. Max Cichlids did it for a very short time but was almost exclusively a small handful of captive bred Costa Rican species. Yes, your favorite sources in the UK, EU, especially Germany and Czech, and the huge Indo & Thai farms were obtaining stock from these sources. With a handful of private specialty collections in-between. But, your large quantity, commercial sized, collections, imports & exports. That's it.
These days your LFS's are almost exclusively obtaining farm raised from Floridian or Asian stock that was sourced from one of those vendors. So again, all are related. This also means many once in the hands of those farms have certainly been mixed or marketed as a similar species. Just about everything the US hobby today is trans-shipped in from Indonesia from the 1 or 2 large trans-shippers and that is what is in every lfs in the US. All from the same places..
Unfortunately the global hobby didn't support the need for wild Central American cichlids at the commercial scale and all of the vendors moved on. What is in the hobby now is it. We have what we have. Enjoy the fish you find and in situations like the OP's case, if it resembles what you were looking for... then its a keeper.
Do you know that 1. yes just 1 wild Amphilophus chancho was ever collected and exported to the US. That single wild chancho was then bred with captive chancho from Willem Heijns stock from the 90s. So all chancho in the global trade are related. Amphilophus hogaboomorum has been commercially collected & exported once, bred in captivity and distributed globally. Again, all are related. This is the same story for several other Nicaraguan Amphilophus species. Any 'Wild' Nicaraguan Amphilophus, or any Nicaraguan cichlid species for that matter, swimming in aquariums today would be pretty old. Most F1s likely are almost aging out by now as well. A few private hobbyists/breeders did a decent job of keeping lineages pure by locality for as long as they could but even those now are several generations bred back to each other.
Looking further down the rabbit hole. Only 2 vendors regularly exported new world cichlids to the European and Asian markets. TUIC was doing it first and for the longest time(29 years) as well was THE direct importer from the Central American countries, when those countries were still exporting, then COTA was the other that was exporting captive bred stock for a solid 10-12 years. Max Cichlids did it for a very short time but was almost exclusively a small handful of captive bred Costa Rican species. Yes, your favorite sources in the UK, EU, especially Germany and Czech, and the huge Indo & Thai farms were obtaining stock from these sources. With a handful of private specialty collections in-between. But, your large quantity, commercial sized, collections, imports & exports. That's it.
These days your LFS's are almost exclusively obtaining farm raised from Floridian or Asian stock that was sourced from one of those vendors. So again, all are related. This also means many once in the hands of those farms have certainly been mixed or marketed as a similar species. Just about everything the US hobby today is trans-shipped in from Indonesia from the 1 or 2 large trans-shippers and that is what is in every lfs in the US. All from the same places..
Unfortunately the global hobby didn't support the need for wild Central American cichlids at the commercial scale and all of the vendors moved on. What is in the hobby now is it. We have what we have. Enjoy the fish you find and in situations like the OP's case, if it resembles what you were looking for... then its a keeper.
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