Is This A Sajica?
- Thread starter jagsndoviman
- Start date
looks more like cutteri to me. here are pics of the Cryptoheros sp. 'cutteri' that I used to have, the female first then the male. some believe cutteri is a color morph of C. spilurum while others believe they are 2 different species. 
kinda looks like a festae cichlid....but thats probably because of the color of the picture...it looks kinda red to me...so see if you can get a betta pic...but could be a sajica..
spilurum and sp cutteri are very close, but coloration is different. imo, that fish looks significantly different, colorwise, from a normal spilurum. check out the pics in this link for pics of all the described species of Cryptoheros. there isn't a picture of a sp cutteri because Juan Miguel hasn't added one yet however I still think that's what this fish looks like. a spilurum's base color is usually a purple/grey with faint bars that are usually the most visible during spawning or when showing aggression. their fins are roughly the same color as the rest of the body as can be seen in the pics in the link. this mystery fish looks to have a lighter base body color with yellow around the abdomenal region and burgundy in the finnage....all characteristics of sp. cutteri. also, check out this thread on the Cichlid Room Companion and in particular Juan Miguel's last post where he links to pics of several different cutteri males and females. there is also discussion of wether or not C. spilurum and C. sp cutteri are the same species or not. In the last post of Juan's where he links to the pics he calls them C. spilurum 'cutteri'. the bottom line, jagsndoviman's fish definitely looks to me like a cutteri which may or may not be a variant or color morph of C. spilurum. it definitely doesn't look like a normal spilurum though.
looks to me just like my big male cutteri wich i have a few of. they are similar to convicts but there are about 6 species i know of off hand that have a similar body shape and size. all from central america. there temperment is not as bad as convicts but other behavior is similar. good luck it is one of my favorites great color and gets white with black stripes when breeding and it stays smaller.
