Possible Andinoacara/Aequidens hybrid

[Cichlid_Guy]

This female looks to me like a hybrid between Blue Acara and something else, because she is able to produce viable fry with my male Blue Acara. Could she be partly an Aequidens tetramerus, if it is possible for these genuses to interbreed succesfully?

Here is a picture of my Blue Acara female for comparison:

 

[kno4te]

Hard to tell but looks like a blue acara to me. Nice looking fish.

 

[Cichlid_Guy]

Here is another picture with all three of my Acaras.


The possible hybrid is always brownish, even when not spawning, while the other two are more pale. She also has a blunter face and a thicker body.

 

[ryansmith83]

It’s possible that it’s one of the other similar Andinoacara species, like latifrons or some of the undescribed species like sp. Venezuela.

Honestly, a lot of the farm raised stuff sold by wholesalers are probably hybridized somewhere along the line either with rivulatus or one of the closely related pulcher-like species. Nothing about this fish suggests Aequidens.

 

[duanes]

There are at least 6 species of Andinoacara that would be considered acara types, as opposed to the terror type clade, depending on who is looking. A biseratus, A blombergi, A. latifrons, A. coeruleopunctatus, A.sapayensis, and A. sp choco,
But more likely, because there are so many location variants of pulcher in its very wide natural range, from Tinidad, to all over Venezuela, pulcher is the probable reality.
It could be that the parents ( or ancestors) were caught from 50 miles away from were your your others are from, and might explain the slight appearance variation.
But also as Ryan said, the possiblities of wholesalers and even collectors are endless.
And expecting local collectors to differentiate one varient from another in many countries is quite remote.
Here in Panama Andinoacara coeruleopunctatus is called a Chogorro by the locals, just as are all small cichlids, whether or not it's Panamius panamense, any species of Amatitlania, or any other cichlid like fish.

This is why some serious aquarists get so anal about certain catch locations for many species, and find big box LFS stocks called by common names to be a waste of time. Catch location is often the only way to know if you got what you asked for.
If you knew catch location, you "might" be able to pinpoint the species.
An example, A. blombergi are only found in certain rivers in Ecuador, and latifrons are from the Rio Magdalena system of Colombia.
Below is A. Coeruleopunctatus punctatus, is it that different from pucher? maybe to some, maybe not to others, but it was caught near San Martin just outside Panama City Panama,which says much about its ID.

 

[Cichlid_Guy]

Thank you both for the interesting information! So the fish is propably just a different "subspecies" of Blue Acara. I have also noticed that the darker female is much less aggressive than the paler ones, which are completely psychotic when spawning.

 

[duanes]

As an example of location differences, compare there Chuco intermedia, from different river systems.

and now one from another river, quite different, but still the same species.

By the way, the name blue acara might mean any of the acara clade, using the common name to differentiate a sub-species, would hardly be considered at all accurate.

 

[Zanzag]

Heres 3 different looks my female blue acara shows. Might help