santoury;915118; said:
I do believe so - they look very different when older, and in breeding condition. When they are younger, the T bar is very prominent, not so much as in adults.
As for septem.... they actually have a lot more reddish coloration over the body, and much less blue, if any. Moreover, when in breeding condition, septem's have bold black bars. (The opposite of what sajica's do) I just have kept both, and ... I guess it just comes with experience with both.
Rapps' picture of sajica show mature adult specimens. They are both barred. I have also seen older
barred specimens. The OP's fish does not look like an "older specimen". She looks like a female in her prime.
When you speak of "more red" and "much less blue" do you take geographical race into consideration?
I see here a faint bit of light blue in the lower belly, under the gold, from bwloe the prominent dark spot to the gillplate - consistent with the pattern of the fish in question
http://cichlidresearch.com/gifs/septemfasciatus5.jpg
the female here, again as I linked this picture in my first post, the female show a nice amount of light blue:
http://aquavisie.retry.org/Database/Vissen/Cryptoheros_septemfasciatus.jpg
The female pictured here is another nice example of the consistent blue/gold coloration of the female pictures I've found:
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=135
The only "red" septems I've found were pictured on cichlidae.com, of which the male was primarily the red fish in coloration. The female's coloration was skewed by the black breeding wash over the belly so I couldn't not determine much from that picture personally. She was not barred BTW and I've not yet found pictured of females in breeding condition which are barred.
I surely wouldn't expect all septems to look the same, or sajica for that matter, but if we were going by generalizations I would expect a female sajica that looked at least a bit more like the one pictured here:
http://www.cichlidae.com/gallery/picture.php?p=497
as most of those I've seen previously had an overall purple or maroon color to them, even young ones. Notice - no metallic outline to the dorsal blotch. I haven't seen this in any picture of female C. sajica yet.
Compare the pictures of C. septemfasciatus and C. sajica here:
http://burnel.club.fr/Photos/Cryptoheros_septemfasciatus.html
http://burnel.club.fr/Photos/Cryptoheros_sajica.html
The first female septem is of unknown location and a very gold color (I will not account for that fish since she may or may not be, in fact, C. septemfasciatus).
The second female septem is from Guiacimito, Costa Rica and bares unmistakable similarity to OP's female.
I'm just going by what I see.
I've never kept them before but have seen a number of them in person and on some more reliable online sources (not that those aren't without mistake).
IMO she's not a sajica. I guess we can agree to to disagree.
