What do you think? A. stalsbergi or A. rivulatus?

[neutrino]

IMO the 'true' and 'false' green terror thing gets on my nerves, since it's basically an amateur notion with a few hobbyists attempting to split hairs or attach an artificial aura of something official about a hobby nickname that's basically irrelevant to the experts. To put it another way, the scientists don't discuss which is the true or false green terror, they simply ID them by the taxonomic names. There's no officially "true" or "false" green terror.

Wayne Leibel, a well known biology professor and cichlid writer has written articles explaining their history and taxonomy where he simply calls them all green terrors, since that's how they've been known in the hobby-- he doesn't distinguish them as 'true' and 'false' in the articles I've read.

When you look them up on fishbase, a taxonomic registry, green terror is listed as a common name for rivulatus, with no common name entry for stalsbergi. I could argue that makes rivulatus a more "official" green terror than stalsbergi, but I'll go with Leibel and say you can call either one a green terror. Or on his list Rapps has Andinoacara stalsbergi with the description "white trim ‘Peru green terror’", which makes sense also, as would white (or gold) trim rivulatus.

Here you go, links to fishbase:
rivulatus
stalsbergi

 

[apertoolfectcircle]

Thanks for the clarification

 

[BuffaloPolypteridae]

The only reason people use the term True or Original green terror for stalsbergi is just that, it was the first fish to be called green terror. Then once rivulatus got more pupular they started calling them green terrors. IMO using a name already in use to give a fish a common name is the amateur notion. Not us refferring to stalsbergi as true green terror, or rivulatus as false or whatever. Why doesnt everyone just call rivulatus orange saum, white saum etc and leave green terror to the fish that originally got that name

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[CrimsonFog]

Why doesnt everyone just call rivulatus orange saum, white saum etc and leave green terror to the fish that originally got that name

That's what I was thinking. I think it would be easier this way and correct. (To me, at least)

 

[darth pike]

By that logic you couldn't use saum either, since stalsbergi was the first silversaum. And it had nothing to do with popularity, the stalsbergi disappeared from the hobby for decades. The description was all they had to go by, and rivulatus looked just like the early descriptions of the 'green terror' that the importers thought they were the same fish. If you want to use 'true' ... it would actually be more accurate to call stalsbergi the 'original' green terror and rivulatus the 'true' green terror since it was the only green terror for far, far longer in the hobby than stalsbergi (given it's decades long absence).

But there will never be any single common name anyway, even new species have gotten several. You wouldn't think with how new they are in the hobby that Geophagus sp. Tapajos 1 would have enough other common name than 'orangehead tapajos', but people still call them redheads despite that is one of the common names of a completely different Geophagus species, one that has been around continuously for over hundred years longer.

Common names are also used for entire groups or families of fish as well ('blue acaras' encompass 5+ different species for example). Just easier to use the scientific names w/ locations if you want to avoid confusion. Lots of branches of the hobby do this (kilifish keepers, wild betta keepers, apisto keepers, westie keepers, pike cichlid keepers) but a lot of fans of centrals don't. And that's how you end up with the mutt convict and midevil messes.

 

[Freshwaterpredators]

Aquidens rivulatus are referred to as saums, stals are not although they do have white trim


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[ryansmith83]

Aquidens rivulatus are referred to as saums, stals are not although they do have white trim

That's not true. Andinoacara stalsbergi were referred to by European hobbyists as Silbersaum (German for "silver hem" or "silver edge") as far back as the early to mid 70s. Alf Stalsberg confirms this because it's the name they knew them by. So again, common names are a problem because they are easily confused.

 

[neutrino]

Common names are also used for entire groups or families of fish as well ('blue acaras' encompass 5+ different species for example). Just easier to use the scientific names w/ locations if you want to avoid confusion. Lots of branches of the hobby do this (kilifish keepers, wild betta keepers, apisto keepers, westie keepers, pike cichlid keepers) but a lot of fans of centrals don't. And that's how you end up with the mutt convict and midevil messes.

Exactly. In fact, the Wayne Leibel article uses the term 'green terror group'. Also note the fishbase common name column for A. rivulatus-- different common names in different countries, green terror in the US. Same situation with other fish, without US hobbyists obsessing over what they might be called in Germany or Scandinavia or which exact fish we call by which common name vs. which exact fish they call by which common name.

I'm not much interested in going down the road of I've been in the hobby "x" number of years and saw "x" number of green terrors back in the day, none of which proves much, considering the fish have only recently been officially distinguished from one another and locations for each fish clarified by scientists or other experts. As far as I'm concerned, the Wayne Leibel article (here) is a good read for anyone who'd like to get all of this straight for themselves, whatever they think they know or would like to know.

Interestingly, the article says the original green terrors imported here were what have turned out to be the Ecuadoran rivulatus, first the white edged fish, before long afterwards the gold edged fish. Meanwhile, pictures were published that included a fish some recognized to be a different (third) Peruvian fish, a fish (now stalsbergi) that a German article published in 1982 called "The Green Terror-- That Isn't". Hmm, sounds like that particular German expert considered the Ecuadoran fish (now A. rivulatus) the 'true' or original green terror and stalsbergi the 'false' green terror. This was the fish being called silbersaum (not green terror) in Germany at the time.

And that's my point, which is 'true' or 'false' depends on who you talk to or their perspective on it. And since we now recognize... or at least that's to say experts like Wayne Leibel recognize an Ecaudor 'green terror' and a Peru 'green terror', I don't much see the point of hobbyists arguing that one is 'true' and the other is 'false'.

 

[neutrino]

Small correction to above, where I said a "German article" and meant to say "article by a German writer".

 

[neutrino]

Another tidbit reference on all this... decided to look up this older Leibel article, because this is how I remember it or understood it at the time-- What is now A. stalsbergi was once referred to as "true rivulatus" in the aquarium books and articles I had or was reading, while what is now rivulatus was called the aquarium "green terror" at the time. Opposite what some people think. Who, when, or why some started calling the Peru (stalsbergi) fish 'true green terror' instead of 'true rivulatus' is another matter, but, speaking for myself, I only started seeing this on forums in the past few years, not in the published material I was reading back in the day. Far as I understood and was reading at the time we had green terrors in the hobby that were commonly called rivulatus, but may not have been "true" rivulatus and there was another fish in the wild that might be the "true" rivulatus-- but again, what some sources were calling the "true rivulatus" back then is now stalsbergi. Any wonder this got confusing?

From the article--

When the first green terrors were imported back in the early 1970s from Ecuador at very high prices,

In the real "Aequidens" rivulatus, it is the centers of the scales that are iridescent, whereas in the green terror, it is the edges of the scales, leaving the centers dark. The edging on the caudal and dorsal fins of this fish are white, leading to the common name "silbersaumbuntbarsche" (silver-edged cichlid) in the German literature. The fin edging in the green terror is orange or red ("goldsaumbuntbarsche"), but I have also seen terrors edged in white.

First "green terrors" from Ecuador, what are now rivulatus. The 'real' rivulatus he's describing is now stalsbergi, with the irridescent scale centers, not the black scale centers of what's now officially rivulatus.

In the literature I read back in the day the differences of opinion were over which was actually "rivulatus", not which was a green terror. In other words, all this was a bit of a mess until A. stalsbergi was officially described as the Peru fish and rivulatus officially became the Ecuador fish. So, if you've been around a while and remember it differently, it may be a matter of who you were talking to or what you were reading or how well you understood it back in the day. None of which matters much now imo, since these fish have been officially described and reclassified anyway, superseding what even some of the experts were writing back in the day.