Geophagus ID

[shawe1]

Hi,

I recently purchased 4 "Geophagus orange head tapajos" and although I am really happy with the purchase I am not convinced they are orange heads.

They are only about 2.5 - 3.5 inches long so I'm not expecting to see lots of colour yet and I did recently change my gravel and they all seemed to lighten up a bit but let me know your thoughts.




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[shawe1]

 

[strollo22]

The light colored sand will definitely fade their colors a bit. But from what I can see, it very well could be an orange head.

 

[fug202]

ignore

 

[fug202]

They don't look like orange heads to me. Orange heads don't have vertical striping on the caudal fin, plus the iridescent pattern on the sides are straighter than what appears in your photos. The unpaired fins should exhibit streaks of orange and blue, as do the ventral fins.

View attachment 944316

Not sure what kind of Geo you have though.

 

[shawe1]

Fug202 I agree, the fins don't seem to have the typical orange and blue stripes.

I have done a fair bit of research on various different Geophagus but most of the images I have seen are of adults so I can't really compare the two.





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[flyingdog]

Not orange heads.

 

[Mythic Figment]

The problem with IDing young geos is that they look so much alike when young that they are often misidentified. This could be a red head. I was just in my fish room and my geo red head juveniles look like this. The vertical stress barring looks the same and they have what appear to be vertical stripes on the caudal fin. I bought them directly from Jeff Rapps as F1, so I trust they are indeed red heads. I also know from experience that they seem to start out with red tails that have white spots and those white spots merge into their horizontal stripes.

The key to IDing young geos is the number of stress bars. The number, width and spacing between the stress bars are important. But some species may have the same width and spacing between bars, but had one less bar than another species or something similar to that except a different factor is slightly off. Having said that, I would agree your geo could be a red head based on what I have seen. It could also be a couple different other species or if I missed a detail in the photo it could be a whole set of other species. You won't likely know for a long time as most geos are slow growers.


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[neutrino]

Put me in the camp of not red heads imo, at least they don't look like mine. I've been raising and/or breeding red heads for a couple of years, and as I type I'm looking right at a tank with 2.5 inch juvies from my breeding pair and what I see are horizontal markings in the tail, faint compared to older red heads, but definitely horizontal, not vertical. Whatever you have looks like they'll be nice, though.

 

[shawe1]

Thanks for your input.

I managed to get some pics which show off the stress bars a bit better, maybe this will help in the ID and if not i suppose I will have to be patient and wait and see as they grow!








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