Above is what was once sold as H pantostictus.
but has recently revised into H tepehua and pame
geographic catch location its very harfd to tell
Unless you have an actual location point (river, lagoon, lake, etc
To me yours looks like one of the many H carpintus location variants, and there are many that look quite different, river to river, lagoon to lagoon
Below left one from Tamasopo river, below right a LFS strain with no known location specified
Below H caprpintus ¨lago Chairel
As you can see, without a catch location given, its a krapp shoot, as far as legitimate ID goes.
And with the random species hybrization these days, along with aquarists that mix location points, and allow subspecies, and locationn points to inter breed, if bought in a LFS, a generic Herichthys aquarium strain, is all one can realistically hope for.
Many aquarists see no difference between H cyannogutatus and carpintus so have been combined ad nauseum, without regard species to legitimacy.
Same has been done to Paratilapia so called Starry night cichlids, when there are at least 5 sepaeate species
Do the 2 below look to the same, yet some aquarists call them both Starry night cichlids?
