Fish ID surinamensis or altifrons?
- Thread starter MATTHEWS
- Start date
I don't even need to download the pic for this one...
If you paid buckets of money to a reputable vendor/collector for wild caught fish from Suriname then they might just be G. surinamensis. If you bought 2" fish for a few bucks from your LFS then they're G. altifrons.
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If you paid buckets of money to a reputable vendor/collector for wild caught fish from Suriname then they might just be G. surinamensis. If you bought 2" fish for a few bucks from your LFS then they're G. altifrons.
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$24 USD ea. for 2" is not what I would call buckets of money.. But it is more than a few. My LFS is reputable and specializes in the rare and exotic. I saw this debate once before on this site. Seems like everyone doubts that one could have a surinamensis, but Suriname is just down south a bit in northern south america. I guess they'll just have to grow out and then we can debate again.
It's not really about the reputation of your LFS, it's simply that very few fish are actually collected from that part of SA. Thomas Weidner describes the situation well in his Eartheaters book. To summarise, in the mid 80's when the first Geophagus-type eartheaters were exported from South American they were from Suriname and described as "Geophagus surinamensis". They were [are!] stunning fish and caused quite a stir in the aquarium hobby. Soon people were collecting similar looking fish from rivers all over the amazon and trading them as "Geophagus surinamensis" to capitalise on the popularity those first imports had generated. Once people started studying and trying to identify/classify them it was soon realised that what had become known as the "Geophagus surinamensis complex" was actually many different (but similar looking) species and subspecies, the most common and wide-spread being Geophagus altifrons (which actually may be more than one species itself, there are several 'Geophagus cf. altifrons' floating around), and the "true" G. surinamensis was actually limited to a very small population of fish. Unfortunately wholesalers, retailers, importers and hobbyists with little interest in taxonomy have opted to just stick with the name "surinamensis" to describe the common most eartheater in the hobby.
There is little doubt that the fish you have is not G. surinamensis, the chance of one accidentally turning up at an LFS is virtually nil. The question is really is it altifrons, or one of the other species like abalios that occasionally gets sold as surinamensis.