Geophagus ID!

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nstefan2597 said:
Wow thank you! All this time I thought I had altifrons lol

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My ID is not a guarantee. Like I said, they are difficult to ID. Even for someone who loves geos and spends plenty of time looking at them in all life stages. But I would say I am 90% sure its a surinamensis.


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I've never seen anything that says G. surinamensis has fused vertical bars. The only one I can think of is G. dicrozoster, which has fused 4th and 5th bars. However, dicrozoster also have a preopercular mark, which these fish do not appear to have.

They'll be easier to ID as they grow and their colors darken (the light substrate may wash them out a bit). You'd need a good shot of the bars, any facial markings (to determine if they have a preopercular mark that's been washed out in these pics), and the pattern in the tail. It's not just about the bars on the body alone. There are several species in the G. surinamensis group that look very similar, and a few that are still undescribed.

My tentative guesses were either G. abalios or G. brokopondo. Again, it's hard to say without better pictures of the markings.
 
To me, they are some sort of geophagus cf. or aff. Altifrons, meaning they are undescribed but similar to altifrons. I have owned all of the above and they do not look like any of the above. Dicrozester and brokopondo both have black chin mark, plus dicrozester body style is more slender. Altifrons would have smaller mid lateral spot. Abalios have a horizontal stripped tail which these are looking like they will be spotted. True surinamensis have a most slender body style, also have a semi stripped tail but have very red eyes especially at a small age. As for the bars , I'm not sure if they connect like they do of these guys, I wanna say no.

But they look to me either geophagus cf. altifrons or geophagus aff. Altifrons.


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^ Yeah, Mark at Discus Origins had some cf. altifrons for sale earlier this year. Two types, I believe. They mostly looked like altifrons with the exception of the larger midlateral spot.

The absence of the preopercular mark rules out the dicrozoster. If I'm not mistaken, the brokopondo were described without the mark. I remember that Peter (peathenster) observed it in his adult fish but it's sometimes it doesn't show at all on younger fish or non-breeding adults. That's why I mentioned them.
 
Yes you are correct. These actually really look like the geophagus altifrons 'xingu' for sale a few months back but they were def either cf. or aff. Altifrons as well because they had a big mid lateral spot just like these. Here's a pic of the ones he was selling


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orinocensis1 said:
To me, they are some sort of geophagus cf. or aff. Altifrons, meaning they are undescribed but similar to altifrons. I have owned all of the above and they do not look like any of the above. Dicrozester and brokopondo both have black chin mark, plus dicrozester body style is more slender. Altifrons would have smaller mid lateral spot. Abalios have a horizontal stripped tail which these are looking like they will be spotted. True surinamensis have a most slender body style, also have a semi stripped tail but have very red eyes especially at a small age. As for the bars , I'm not sure if they connect like they do of these guys, I wanna say no.

But they look to me either geophagus cf. altifrons or geophagus aff. Altifrons.


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What does cf and aff stand for I have never heard of that.

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The abbreviation cf is for the Latin word conferre, while aff is an abbreviation of the Latin word affinis. I've seen a lot of people say that cf stands for "color form" but this is not how it was originally used.

Both words basically mean "to compare." So if you see something written as Geophagus cf. altifrons or Geophagus sp. aff. altifrons, it means that they're comparable to altifrons but probably either an undescribed species, a regional variant, etc.

Usually if someone uses the cf abbreviation they will also include some identifier in the name, like a source river, a color type, or so on:

Geophagus cf. altifrons 'Rio Xingu'
 
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