What's the differences between peacocks and haps?

[Fanatic_Fish_Lunatic]

Can you tell the difference between haps and peacocks when they're juveniles? Like around 2-3 inches. When I look inside a tank in a local fish shop, and they're just a tank full of mixed malawi species at 2-3 inches at best. I can't tell the difference between peacocks and haps, I don't even know the patterns and shapes of them. Can you tell me the way to tell like, "oh, that fish is a peacock and that one is a hap!", something like that. By their shape? Or anything else?

 

[DJRansome]

You never want to buy from an assorted tank. You have no way of knowing the ID of the fish or whether they are pure, even if they LOOK like a pure fish using visual ID.

Buy from vendors that mark their tanks with scientific names...genus, species and collection point. I prefer to buy online for selection and pure species.

Juvenile/female peacocks usually have consistent brownish/silver bars. Haps have a variety of shapes and markings. A two-three inch fish is not really such a juvenile anymore.

 

[Fanatic_Fish_Lunatic]

You never want to buy from an assorted tank. You have no way of knowing the ID of the fish or whether they are pure, even if they LOOK like a pure fish using visual ID.

Buy from vendors that mark their tanks with scientific names...genus, species and collection point. I prefer to buy online for selection and pure species.

Juvenile/female peacocks usually have consistent brownish/silver bars. Haps have a variety of shapes and markings. A two-three inch fish is not really such a juvenile anymore.

Ok, so 2 or 3 inches are not considered to be juvenile for most malawi cichlids? I'm sorry, I'm too much of a lage CA/SA species, so I used those 'juvenile' sizes as a standard for Malawi.

 

[DJRansome]

Once they can produce fry, which happens for some Malawi at 1.5", they are adults. On the other hand, 3" is commonly used as a size when you can determine gender by appearance.

Males may not color in an assorted tank.

 

[Fanatic_Fish_Lunatic]

Once they can produce fry, which happens for some Malawi at 1.5", they are adults. On the other hand, 3" is commonly used as a size when you can determine gender by appearance.

Males may not color in an assorted tank.

Produce fry at 1.5"??? I assumed this is applicable to most, if not all mbunas then?

 

[DJRansome]

I use the same size to indicate juveniles with mbuna, but just like haps and peacocks, not all species are likely to produce fry at 1.5"...just some. The size at which they produce fry varies with mature size and species. This 1.5" might not apply to large haps but I don't keep them.

Just something to prevent people from thinking that the fish are not mature until they are six inches. They continue to grow throughout their lifespan.

 

[neutrino]

Agree that buying from a 'mixed African cichlids' tank is a bad idea if you want pure species. Most haps and peacocks are still juveniles at 2-3 inches, though that can depend on their growth in your tank and on species size. I bred haps and peacocks for years and disagree that just because some species can start spawning at half their adult size it makes them adults. Thirteen year old teenagers can start making babies, that doesn't make them adults-- and I mean physically adult, not talking about mentally, emotionally, or legally.

Whether or not you can distinguish haps and peacocks from one another, or specific species from one another, depends a lot on species. A lot of them look virtually the same, but fish like Aulonocara stuartgranti "ngara," Otopharynx Lithobates, some of the Protomelas species, and others show differences at relatively small sizes. So, for example, if you're breeding something like Z-rocks lithobates, it doesn't take long before you can recognize them as juveniles.

 

[neutrino]

Almost forgot that I meant to mention: Basically, "peacocks" belong to the Aulonocara genus, most are very similar aside from color pattern; a few, like the those in the jacobfreiberti group, are mildly distinctive in subtle ways. "Haps" are most of the rest, excluding mbuna. They're more diverse, comprising a number of different genera. All are "haplochromine."