Geophagus id

[ryansmith83]

Araguaia is a tributary of the Tocantins but a few people including Heiko Bleher say they have fished it extensively and found no orange-headed geo of any kind. In that area you have sveni and neambi.

According to the profile on Seriously Fish these are the differences:

The two differ in the extent of orange colouration on the head which extends onto the opercle in G. sp. ‘orange head (rio Arapiuns form) but is mostly restricted to the area above the eyes in G. sp. ‘Araguaia orange head’ (Tapajós main channel form).

There is also a solid bar of orange pigmentation running along the dorsal surface between the dorsal and caudal in the Arapiuns form which isn’t present in the Tapajós variant.

 

[Simonc82]

Thank you for the link! that was very informative and also it seems on my side of the pond all these types of geos are just labelled red head tapajos! I honestly wasent aware that there was such closely related species.

 

[ryansmith83]

Thank you for the link! that was very informative and also it seems on my side of the pond all these types of geos are just labelled red head tapajos! I honestly wasent aware that there was such closely related species.

It’s very likely they are both the same species, with some slight geographical differences.

A good example are Heros severus. My original wilds came from Curare in Venezuela. They all had 8.5 bars and the females had striated faces just like males, which is uncommon in Heros. They also had red heads and bodies extending back to the front of the dorsal fin.

A couple years later a new source near San Felipe in Colombia was discovered. They’re from the same watershed but a different river. The fish don’t always have 8.5 bars — sometimes it’s 8, sometimes 8.5, sometimes 9. The red coloration is much less intense. These females have solid faces like other female Heros, unlike my original Curare source.

Yet in terms of geographical proximity and also scale and fin ray counts, they’re the same species. The differences are minor but easy enough to see in wild-caught fish.

When it comes to the orange head geos, a lot of the available fish now are farm/pond bred. I doubt these farms have distinguished between the two sources. So what we likely have in the hobby is probably a mix of both. Also, exporters in Brazil probably aren’t keeping track of whether the fish they’re selling come from the main channel of the Tapajos or a tributary. They will list them all the same.

Whether OP’s fish show traits of one or the other, the fish are essentially the same species regardless of the name they go by. Until they’re formally described I’d just call them orange heads.

 

[Simonc82]

I live in ireland and we now have a lot of local hobbyists supplying our fish stores with red heads and even this past 12 months r so we r seeing alot of sveni being bred here also .