ZZ (Zhen Zhu) is the most common strain of flowerhorn, it is generally the one you will find in your LFS. they always have red eyes. generally they have a hard kok (nuchal hump) but of course some of them will have a water kok. most ZZ will also have a round tail, as opposed to the triangle shaped tail like a good quality Kamfa should have.
ZZM (Zhen Zhu Malau) is pretty much a perfected ZZ, nice pearling, nice color, nice kok.
Kamfa is the result of breeding a ZZ or ZZM with a Blood Parrotthis gets you the sideways triangle tail flowerhorn lovers disire , along with the very nice ones that get a nice wrap tail (when the Tail, Dorsal, and Anal fins appear to join together as one) Kamfas of decent to good quality will have a water kok, if a Kamfa has a hard kok it is immidiately bad quality.
King Kamfa is pretty well a perfected Kamfa, the 3 most common way to classify a fish a King Kamfa, is by a thick full double flower row, big thick white-silver colored pearl spots (and i mean THICK), and of course, a very large kok!
Jin Kang is pretty easy to identify, they are bright yellow and pink and some have white pearling. this variant barely ever gets a nice size kok on it, if you get one with a nice kok hang on to it! this variant is also usually sterile.
Red Dragon is pretty much a color variant of a ZZ, with the bright red front half of the body. nice ones will get water kok.
GM (Gold Monkey)is the USA bred ZZM really, they usually have an under bite (bottom gaw sticks out beyond the top jaw) and is more of a square shape face, they also usually have sand pearling (pearls that look like someone sprinkled sand on your fish) and generally they have a wider caudal peduncle (the area that seperates the caudal fin (tail) from the body)
RM/SRS (Red Monkey/Super Red Synspilum) look almost like a bright red synspilum, they are a type of Kamfa, a lot of them have an over bite (top jaw petrudes over bottom), cant remember much else about them.
SRT (Super Red Texas) a very disinguishable variant, anywhere from a peach color to a brilliant Dark red with bright white pearls, like i said, very easy to distinguish from other variants. it is a cross between a King Kong Parrot and a Carpintis, over the course of breeding over many generations.
RBK (Rainbow King) is a cross between a Vieja sp (usually synspilum) and a King Kong Parrot, over many generations. they pretty much just look like a Vieja hybrid to me, nice though.
RQ (Rose Queen) is the result over many generations of breeding a Midas with a Synspilum, body wise they look fairly RM/SRS, and even have that over bite, but the color range is from peach to purple, so a tad different, they can also get a bit of gold pearling on them also from the synspilum.
if anyone can ad more variants please do, my brain isnt working well right now
im not goin to ridicule you, everyone here was at that stage at one point, just make an effort to learn and you will be very knowledgeable in no time
