He should be able to call his supplier and ask if they know what they are. Still can't help you with a 100% ID, sorry bud.
ID Vieja species Please
- Thread starter King-eL
- Start date
The thing was they were just contaminants from a shipment of vieja argentea and when he complained about the two species, his sources said he ship them with all vieja argentea. He ordered 40 3-4" vieja argentea and only came in at 38 and the two were these two unknown viejas. They were wild caughts from Guatemala.
This seems to be a hot topic on the web lately. I have a tankful of f1 synspilum that look the same. The parents were wild caught and showed the same heavy stripe running almost the full length of their bodies. As adult the stripe broke up and "shrank". Mine dispay a lot more blue than most synspila. The male has a huge plum head with a large hump. I wonder if/when they will be discribed as a new species. Mine were wilds from Rio Seco Belize.
The 4" does not show any blue freckles only the 3" but the 3" will always fallow the 4" wherever it goes. Guest got no choice but to really grow them to 6"-8"-10" or 12" for final ID.
No not vieja regani. I have a 6" vieja regani and got it at 2" and never looked like this when young.
I agree with the first one being correctly identified as synspylum. The second one is a little bit ambiguous. Seeing is how synspylum and bifasciatum are found in overlapping distributions it could go either way however the lateral bar to me looks more bifasciatum.
Just my opinion, syn will not have the black bar extend so far in. Usually it is sort of breaking patches. For 4" syn, the head should already be red but from the photo, it is not. I suspect they are syn/ bifa hybrid as they are very common in the market.
Neither of these are bifa I'll say it again. There is no blotched spotting above the lateral line. I would also assume the second is a hybrid because of the weird worming coloration on the face and same colored speckling across the back
Well agrentea aren't from Guatemala. They're endemic to Mexico (Usumacinta basin), which is close to Guatemala but I'm not sure if it extends into it.
No one is going to be able to give you a positive ID. These guys all look VERY similar when small, and there are a lot of hybrid Vieja types out there right now as well. Sorry.
EDIT: I did some more looking and the Usumacinta basin does extend into Guatemala, though both Fishbase.com and cichlidae.com have argentea as endemic to Mexico. So who knows.
