Male Festae color variations, photos enclosed
- Thread starter Piranhanut
- Start date
Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is only one color variant of Amphilophus festae.
There are several factors that may make your festae appear to be different, such as food, quality of water, substrate, and generation. Obviously wild caugth festae are gonna be much much better lookin than any captive bred. All the fish you have currently are gonna look relatively the same. Male festae don't really color up properly until they are 10" or larger. Until then, you can't judge how they are gonna look as adult by their current appearance. The fish you posted are simply showin stress bars, which doesn't nesseccarily mean they are stressed. It has a lot to do with the attitude of the fish and what not as well. Plus having them all on a darker substrate is going to influence their coloration, with it being much more likely to have bands.
Having said that, only your FIRST THREE pictures look like true male festae. The bottom two pictures have the characteristic "Y" bar that is typical of festae, but they are lackin the SMALL occelated spot at the base of the caudual. Instead, they have the LARGE occelated spot at the base of caudual fin, which indicates Uro. Which makes me wonder if they are PURE festae, or possibly a hybridization of uro and festae. Hope that helps a little, cheers!!
There are several factors that may make your festae appear to be different, such as food, quality of water, substrate, and generation. Obviously wild caugth festae are gonna be much much better lookin than any captive bred. All the fish you have currently are gonna look relatively the same. Male festae don't really color up properly until they are 10" or larger. Until then, you can't judge how they are gonna look as adult by their current appearance. The fish you posted are simply showin stress bars, which doesn't nesseccarily mean they are stressed. It has a lot to do with the attitude of the fish and what not as well. Plus having them all on a darker substrate is going to influence their coloration, with it being much more likely to have bands.
Having said that, only your FIRST THREE pictures look like true male festae. The bottom two pictures have the characteristic "Y" bar that is typical of festae, but they are lackin the SMALL occelated spot at the base of the caudual. Instead, they have the LARGE occelated spot at the base of caudual fin, which indicates Uro. Which makes me wonder if they are PURE festae, or possibly a hybridization of uro and festae. Hope that helps a little, cheers!!
They're all festae. No uro or mixes there.
So, what fish are in the same tanks? I just looks like dominant coloration vs. sub-dominant coloration.
So, what fish are in the same tanks? I just looks like dominant coloration vs. sub-dominant coloration.
Modest_Man;909732; said:
thats what i would have said and is prob influenced by substrate aswell,although dominance is the overriding factor here,these are just my experiences with various medium/large centrals(inc festae) over the last 23 years
All in the same tank accept for the top fish since hes too small yet. The top photo of the F2 3" male Festae shares a 20g long with 2 F2 females, one about an inch long and the other about 2". Its coloration was like that when I bought it at an inch long. I could ID the sexes when I bought them. I was shocked since everyone says its imposible to sex at a young age. I think the LFS and dealers have brain washed everyone into believing this so they themselves dont get stuck with all their male Festaes so they keep telling everyone that some magical morning they are going to wake up and see their fish all colored up. The 2 females were .5" and 1" and already showing their black top dorsal and coloring up yellow with black bars. The second fish(gold) is around 7" the next one down, which would be the fourth pic is also the same size. This green male was the biggest of them all and then the gold colored male caught up in size. The last is around the 5" mark. I was wondering if the dominant thing was causing the coloration. When I bought these bigger 3 males they shared the same tank and were around the 3.5"-4" mark and showed the exact same coloration from day one. There were a bout 15 males in the tank, the only one that didnt look like the dull green with bars was my gold so I snagged him up along with the only female and ended up grabbing these 2 other males at the time listing to the pet store owner telling me they could turn out to be females. Im sure youve all heard that song and dance before. And lastly, yes they are a true purebred Festae and I have still seen the same different coloration at the 10" plus mark. My question is when I bought my fish there were a ton of males in that tank bigger than my gold male. I am assuming he just had an attitude or was extremely horny that he was the only fish to color this way.
what I know is that there are two strains of festaes; the first is the black strain
most evident in the females, the bars on the female are deep black; the second is the blue strain which the female has light blue vertical stripes: the rest
depends on mood. The two come from diferent parts of south america..
just my two cents......... Nice fish!!!!
most evident in the females, the bars on the female are deep black; the second is the blue strain which the female has light blue vertical stripes: the rest
depends on mood. The two come from diferent parts of south america..
just my two cents......... Nice fish!!!!
I used to have a male festae that looked like your third pic but a couple months after trading him to a friend he looked more like the fourth pic. Probably just a change in stress level caused the color change.
