Firemouth or Not?

[Miles]

Agree with the Affinis statement..

Keep in mind though, It did come from a corporate chain which gives me one suspicion.. It's a mut Probably has weak genetics, was overly bred, and might of got some other fish mixed in along the way.. Hard to identify exact species when they are all in a 1000g pool in some fish farm in Florida.

 

[Jason_S]

ditto to what Miles said and I want to add that I think most of the commercially farmed and raised firemouths are a combination of meeki and affinis. that would explain why you see some with almost no color and others that are super colorful. add in the inbreeding and lack of bringing in wild stock to freshen the genes and you can wind up with some very dull looking fish.

also, there are now at least 11 known Thorichthys species, however only 8 of them have been officially described and assigned scientific names. the 3 undescribed species are the sp. 'mixteco gold', sp. 'mixteco blue' and sp. 'mixteco green'. there are a few who believe these are the same species and merely different variants, but I think there are far more who believe they are separate species. however, all that aside, based on the body shape of the fish in question you can rule out any of the helleri group, which basically only leaves pasionis, affinis and meeki. based on coloration you can easily rule out pasionis. so that leaves this fish to be either affinis, meeki or a mix of both (which is what I guess it to be).

 

[danny boy]

im not convinced its the thorichtys affinis. maybe the aureus is closer, but the barring is all wrong on both species
the pasionis is the closest i can find in that family (jason not sure what pictures you have of the pasionis but all my books look very similar in all aspects and that includes baensch)

either way its not a meeki thats for sure.

 

[Jason_S]

here are a few links with pics of T. pasionis

http://www.cichlidae.com/gallery/species.php?s=249

http://burnel.club.fr/Photos/Thorichthys_pasionis.html

http://www.cichlidae.info/article.php?id=148


here's a link with pic of T. affinis

http://www.home.zonnet.nl/cichliden.org/Soorten-Vis/Specials/Thorichthys-Affinis.htm

one distinguishing characteristic of T. pasionis (that you can see in all these links) is that they have black gills. no other species in the genus has this trait.

also, what do you mean about the barring being wrong? all Thorichthys have very similar barring that usually will only show during pre and post spawning.

 

[moose35]

mixteco

 

[danny boy]

here are a few links with pics of T. pasionis

http://www.cichlidae.com/gallery/species.php?s=249

http://burnel.club.fr/Photos/Thorichthys_pasionis.html

http://www.cichlidae.info/article.php?id=148


here's a link with pic of T. affinis

http://www.home.zonnet.nl/cichliden.org/Soorten-Vis/Specials/Thorichthys-Affinis.htm

one distinguishing characteristic of T. pasionis (that you can see in all these links) is that they have black gills. no other species in the genus has this trait.

also, what do you mean about the barring being wrong? all Thorichthys have very similar barring that usually will only show during pre and post spawning.

intresting to see those pics as the pics in my book are diffrent. i did come across this though which im sure you'll agree is even closer than anything else we have mentioned

http://www.akvarieforum.no/profile.cfm?tab=3&id=13488&image=3093

note some of the species have a vertical barring that the suspect pics didnt have. its probably related to stress though i guess

 

[sandtiger]

ditto to what Miles said and I want to add that I think most of the commercially farmed and raised firemouths are a combination of meeki and affinis. that would explain why you see some with almost no color and others that are super colorful. add in the inbreeding and lack of bringing in wild stock to freshen the genes and you can wind up with some very dull looking fish.

also, there are now at least 11 known Thorichthys species, however only 8 of them have been officially described and assigned scientific names. the 3 undescribed species are the sp. 'mixteco gold', sp. 'mixteco blue' and sp. 'mixteco green'. there are a few who believe these are the same species and merely different variants, but I think there are far more who believe they are separate species. however, all that aside, based on the body shape of the fish in question you can rule out any of the helleri group, which basically only leaves pasionis, affinis and meeki. based on coloration you can easily rule out pasionis. so that leaves this fish to be either affinis, meeki or a mix of both (which is what I guess it to be).

Interesting info, being a fan of thorichthys species I will have to look into that.

 

[Chad55]

They look alot like affines. And no they are not agressove at all. They are just so wierd.

Chad

 

[Jason_S]

Interesting info, being a fan of thorichthys species I will have to look into that.

Here is an article on Thorichthys maculipinnis

An article on the firemouth

A short synopsis of the Thorichthys

An introduction to Thorichthys

A brief rundown of the 3 Mixtecos

The Socolofi story by Rusty Wessel

and I'm sure there are more great articles on Juan Miguel's site. Juan Miguel and Rusty Wessel are probably the most knowledgeable 2 people on the Thorichthys genus. Fortunately Rusty lives rather close to me so I've had the privelege to pick his brain on these fish as well as his other passions (from what I could tell by the cichlids he keeps) the Viejas and Herichthys.

 

[sandtiger]

I have actually read most of those articles, I love that site. Thanks though, nice to see another fan of an (in my opinion) under rated genus.