110 replies to this topic

[LC60]

This post is an attempt to clarify the Geophagus sp. Orange Head variant identification issues and to discuss and study these fish and hopefully add to what is already known about these beautiful and intriguing eartheaters.
There has been little information on geos come through to us hobbyists since Thomas Weidner's eartheater book published in 2000 (still my bible), that is, available to english speaking geo hobbyists, i have begun translating articles on geos from german to english and i make those available to hobbyists on my blog as I complete them, (but it is often slow going)
Just another point I'd like to make: I recently had the pleasure to be able to contribute to the positive id on a specie of geo now in the country. My contribution was small, to translate a section of a german book on geos, but I enjoyed contributing in my way and figured maybe there are some other hobbyists who would enjoy being involved in something like this as well.... So I'm inviting any hobbyists who keep and/or breed , Geophagus sp. "Orange Head" of whichever variant, and is interested, to join in and get involved, to have a go with me to do something that I think will be interesting, worthwhile, satisfying and fun, and may just contribute something significant to the hobby we love. At the very least we will learn a lot about our fish.

Thomas Weidner emphasised the importance of the role that the average hobbyist/breeder would make to the future body of information regarding these fish, (I can't remember the actual quote but maybe someone else does?) So i can see an opportunity here for us hobbyists to work together, do some collaborative research and produce something worthwhile. So if you have these fish and are interested, come on board and help us out .


The question of orange head id comes up on every forum relating to geos and cichlids, yet is still not clarified. There are a lot of people with orange head 'Tapajos' in perth apparently, or are there?......Have a look at the pics below and compare to your fish and see what you think. But unfortunately it doesn't seem to be as simple as that

Pic 1:
ORANGE HEAD TYPE 1 ----------------------------------------------------------- ORANGE HEAD TYPE 2


Pic 2:



This actually began in another thread to do with g. sp. orange/red heads in the photo album section of this forum,

Basically, there are problems with the id of orange heads in this country. there seems to be problems with identifying orange heads globally, I have posted the same pic of the same orange head (Not the pics or fish shown above though) on a number of forums including eartheaters.com and got contradictory responses, and from people far more knowledgeable and experienced than me.

Anyway, my position is this:

The fish on the right in pic 1 is Geophagus sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' and the fish on the left is Geophagus sp. "Araguaia" 'Orange Head'. The problem is that while I can see it, I can't prove it yet.

Cheers
Laz

[LC60]

The second part of the project has already begun, I have bought 50 G. sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' fry which are the offspring of the fish on the right in pic 1, atm they are btw 6-7mm and approximately 6 weeks old, (see Pics in Post #4) these will be raised in an 8x2x2+ aquarium, as a community for as long as the space is enough to accommodate these rapidly growing fry, then I thin out the community as necessary, but will always maintain as large a community as tank space will allow. When it comes to identifying geos the experts always ask to start with pics of the fry, so I'll be starting the documentation with these pics, even though i won't receive the fish until after they reach 4cm and the breeder is satisfied that the fry are robust enough to handle the flight and changing conditions.

I guess the thing here is that I'm going to be conducting this research anyway, and I thought that some of you fellow hobbyists might enjoy being involved as well, and/or conduct your own study together with mine, so I figured why not make it public and have contributions from any interested fellow hobbyists. So is anyone interested? If you have or are getting some orange heads and want to do your own study/research and/or take part in this, just join in.


e.g. Poncho's keen and has some great ideas:

[QUOTE (Poncho @ Apr 8 2009, 01:44 AM) *]
I do think they have the ability to learn from previous mistakes in terms of selecting spawning sites. My crude little experiment falls far short of proving this level of intelligence but it does convince me that they are at least very adaptable to the environment, which is fairly common in the cichlid world. From observation it is obvious they have quite complex social structures and unlike fish like tetras not just a basic schooling instinct. It would be interesting to see a much larger group, say 30 or 40 fish, of varying sizes and ages and observe these social structures then as this is probably quite limited the small group of 7 that I have. (Ronny's borrowing my book at the moment so can you tell me if it mentions anything about schooling size in there).[Quote/]

Poncho, I noticed you said that you were growing up some of your orange head fry, do you plan to do a study on the learning ability?? social behaviours and communication of these fish? It sounds like a worthwhile and interesting project, that could work in well here. Also, thanks for your input, I would like to discuss and perhaps plan with you, some research into social structures and behaviours of these fish, this is one area that I am really keen to explore.

Cheers
Laz

[Hood]

The fish on the right in pic.1 is Geophagus sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' and the fish on the left is Geophagus sp. "Araguaia" 'Orange Head'.

I'm glad you've used this pic for comparison Laz...

...because it makes it very obvious that the G.araguaia on the left has the 'orange head' but not the 'copper' cheeks/face,
where as the G.tapajos on the right however, does have the 'copper' cheeks/face and the orange head,
which as far as I can tell seems to be one of the more obvious visually defining characteristics of the 2 species...

[LC60]

I'm glad you've used this pic for comparison Laz......because it makes it very obvious that the G.araguaia on the left has the 'orange head' but not the 'copper' cheeks/face,
where as the G.tapajos on the right however, does have the 'copper' cheeks/face and the orange head,
which as far as I can tell seems to be one of the more obvious visually defining characteristics of the 2 species...

Hey Josh, thanks for your support mate. I'll respond to this post of yours a bit further down the track (See Post #35)
Cheers
Laz

But to get phase 2 of this project underway, here is a recent pic of one of the fry that I'm getting, the breeder/owner/photographer has given me permission to post this pic, I'm going to ask him to give me monthly update pics and progress reports along the way too, which I'll post here as we go along, that way we'll have a progressive record of growth and development.....

Pic #3: Geophagus sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' at approx. 6-7mm and 6 weeks old. This fish is one of the fry from the G. sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' on the right in Pic 1 above and in pic 2.

Here's some update pics #4&5 showing the progress my tapas are making, (thanks to the breeder of these who doesn't want to be identified just yet, and fair enough)
Pic #4: 1.5 cm at 7 weeks of age from spawn date 27-02-09


Pic #5


Pic #6


So here's the study plan:

I'll be receiving fifty of the above fry in aproximately 3-4 months when they reach 4cms in length and the breeder is confident that they are robust enough to survive the trip and changes to conditions. These fifty fish will be put into a big tank eg 8x2x2+ and grown up together as a community as much as possible until adulthood and spawning occurs, recording as much as possible including social structure/community, communication/language behaviours, etc(Poncho suggested this as well).

So that's basically the study project I am undertaking. I'm going to be doing this anyway, the deal for the fish is done, enquiries are underway for the tank, and so it's on for me. But I figured as I'm going to be doing this anyway, why not do it publicly and also see if anyone else wants to contribute, to provide the opportunity to get involved if they want to, and maybe raise interest in these fish, and they are so full of character and colour, I recommend them to anyone who wants to try their hand at maintaining and maybe breeding an interesting and colourful geo. And then I thought : well there's a lot of people in perth with orange heads, and there's not a lot of information around about them, well not new information anyway, I've seen that on this forum there are more than a few talented and accomplished breeders//keepers of these fish, so I figured maybe if there are some of you as keen as me, well why don't we work together and conduct some sound/research/study and write our own information, do it together and why not use this forum to present it, then at the end or progressively would probably be better, collate the information generated into a sound guide on maintaining and breeding these fish. Poncho has already indicated that he is interested in conducting a study of his own like this, so I'm asking: is there anyone else who would like to get involved in this or at least follow this project along?

Cheers
Laz

[Ronny]

Count me in Laz

I may not be a boffan on the species but I can contribute what I can with my fish

Luckily, I have a decent number of juvies, which I've had since they were fry

And I doubt anyone would rather you pipe down and disappear,
your interest and thirst for knowledge has inspired me to do the same.

[dom]

larry keep up the good work .its people like you that are good for the hobby ,you are one of few who actually do this for the love of the hobby ..........not just about money you have taught me a thing or three about geos that i never knew before ...thank you . ill be in any project and you have my support on what you are doing .regards dom ...hey laz could it be posible that they are both the same fish and that they have been cross bred along the lines somwhere and some one playing doctor jeckl and mr hyde ....tammpered withj the species i mean . let me know what you think .i strongly believe this to be true ....regards dom

[Cicolid]

Hi Laz,

I am still very much a "L" plater as far as Geos are concerned but if I can help in any way just let me know.
I assume the Tapajos I bought at the auction were from the same batch. I will try to find out the history of them.

Keep up the good work and keep us informed of progress.

Cheers
Col

[ozarowana]

Characteristics I have yet to disprove are:

1. The head colour of the Tapajos variant is almost always more an orange colour. This can change to red but is usually orange. The Araguaia variant seems to never be an orange colour and seems to be more a red colour. The first pic shows this well.

2. The solid coloured stripe between the dorsal and the caudal fin. The Tapajos variant shows this when head colour is present and the intensity of stripe is linked to how much colour is present on the head. I've never seen this stripe in the Araguaia variant, even in males showing full head colour. There is a bit of colour but it is only a very minute amount on each scale and doesn't make a solid stripe.





Also... The operculum colour in individuals of the Tapajos variant seems to be restricted to males and only a small number of males show this (possibly related to age). Therefore it's not a very easy characteristic to use for IDing.

[LC60]

Hey guys, thanks for your responses and support, I'll respond to you here soon, but first..........

[LC60]

Ok, it looks like we have some interest, so.....

The subject of this study is 50 offspring(Pic 3) of the fish on the right in pic 1 (above) and the fish in pic 2. I believe this fish is a Geophagus sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head', but as there is more than a little confusion over correctly identifying orange heads, for the integrity of the study, I first need to prove that the fish is what I say it is. But I can't do that on my own, I've been trying to clarify the situation for myself for over 12 months now, and I know Ozarowana recently put a lot of effort into this subject: http://eartheaters.q...page=orangehead, and I had a phone conversation with him about the issue, So his site gives us a reference point of what is known and thought at this point in time. Ozarowana's already done a lot of the hard work for us here, but I believe it is important to start at the beginning and work our way through until we exhaust all possibilities thoroughly, and the rest will have to come from research and study of the fish themselves. So to make things interesting I'll make this statement:

I have 5 Geophagus 'Tapajos' 'Orange Heads' in my tank, I know that there are lots of people in Perth who have orange heads and believe them to be tapajos. But I don't think your fish are the same as mine.

We need to conduct a literature review for the upcoming project where we review all that is already known about these fish, and to definitely establish that these fish are in fact tapajos. I see conflicting id's in the orange head pics posted all over the net,

The first question that I would like to see answered is: Are there any other true 'Tapajos' orange heads in perth?

Pics of what I believe are true orange head tapas seem quite scarce, on the forums and the net in general. So I would be delighted to discover that there were some other true tapas in perth, then we would have another bloodline to add to and strengthen the gene pool.

So there's a challenge for you all, find some true tapas in someones tank in perth, I have heard that someone around malaga has some pretty special ones, I did see 2 fry from these at 4cm in malaga aquariums, and those two little fish looked very nice, top quality, but at that size there is no way to tell, so I'd like to see what they grow up to look like, I don't know anything of the origins of poncho's fish and haven't seen them, so who knows they might be true tapas, .....but I don't think so, I know that Den brought some over a while back but I don't know anything about those fish or their origins, I also know that Az (I saw some of these at the auction @ 6cm and they looked very nice too), and some of the other LFs's and dealers have brought some over, I know the origin of some but not others. So....... If we do this right at the very least everyone who follows it will learn a lot about their fish. and who knows what the best outcome could be.

The thing is, I can look at pic 1 and say 'that fish is a 'tapajos' and that fish is an 'araguaia' but I can't actually prove that, there is too much confusion and a lack of clarity in the literature and on the net.

It could also be that the outcome of this is very different to what I expect.

Cheers
Laz

[Ronny]

Looks like it's on now lol.

I think there'll be a few supplieres getting a few calls about geos

For those interested in backtracking the origin of our fish, what would you recomend the best way to go about it?

[Poncho]

Great thread Larry.

I'm really keen to be involved in any type of research or experiment with these fish - they are becoming a firm favourite of mine. There is only so much one hobbyist can do in this regard considering limitations such as tank space, so it's a great idea to start some kind of collaborative effort amongst interested keepers of orange heads.

I've got 40 or 50 odd juvies growing up now from my stock and I plan on adding around 12 of them back into my colony of 7. I'm keen to see how the adults will react with sub-adults. Terry pointed out to me a very interesting thing with Uaru which was, the sub-adults will revert back to juvenile patterns when food is available so that the adult fish will allow them to feed in peace and not shoo them away. I've got 10 of the suckers and have seen this for myself - it's pretty cool! In the tank my orange heads can't defend free swimming fry from the other hungry fish, so I miss out on seeing extended parental care but I can reintroduce sub-adults and see how the original group takes it. Ideally I would like to add fish from someone elses stock but with the whole ID thing I'm too worried about crossing varients to go down that path.

Speaking of ID - Larry you've convinced me to get off my butt and look deeper into it and I'll be posting up some (hopefully) pointy questions soon to critique people's identification on the location of their fish. I'll be asking the questions not to try and prove anyone wrong but rather to clear any doubts in my mind and hopefully the minds of other people new to orange heads as to why one fish is tapajos and the other araguaia. I don't want to undermine or seem ungrateful for the efforts of people like ozarowana, japes (and yourself?) in trying to provide a Geo ID resource for the aquarium hobby in Australia - that work is fantastic and deserves the support of all geo fanatics in Aus!

However, to start with, Larry - can you list the reasons why you have ID'd the fish in your first post as either tapajos or araguaia. Is it solely based on the redness or coverage of red on the head between the two fish? (seems to be the main argument used) There may be other explanations for these differences that don't necessarily mean that the fish are from seperate locations. I mentioned in the other thread that diet, water parameters, condition of the fish, mood of the fish are all things that influence colour intensity in cichlids. Another factor could be line breeding and you mention age as well. Chuong mentions in his post that ID'ing using this characteristic is problematic also due to gender.

The experience with my fish - I have not seen the full operculum coloured up before (araguaia)
- I see the head as being orange in colour most of the time but can intensify to red (tapajos) - of course this is very subjective and what I call orange others may swear is red
- When red the colour is restricted to areas around the lips and on the crown of the head only (not sure if this means anything)
- the colour and intensity is very much related to the mood of the fish and can change momentarily - how can someone ask an experienced keeper to ID their fish based on this characteristic when they are providing one photo at one particular point in time.

Some of these doubts can easily be ruled out. Provide details of age of the two different fish pictured, have they been kept in the same tank for long? have they been raised on the same foods? What sex are they?
Too often comparisons are made on forums between two different photos from two different people with no other information other than the visual. The assumption is made that it is lineage at play rather than some of the other factors I have mentioned. People keeping both suspected types are in a much better position to rule some of these things out and hopefully can provide some input here with regards to this.

PS - Larry, can you send me the link to your blog?

[Poncho]

My fish were from Den and I'm certain you would call them araguaia.

Perhaps we need to create a list of the literature. Obviously Weidner and Chuong's site are the main sources we are going by. There are a couple of Eartheater specific forums (not sure if I can put a link up), what else have you got?

[Hood]

Hey poncho, you make some very valid points mate. But I feel u may have misunderstood me when I was talking about color on the heads in the earlier post. I was refering to the actual color of the cheeks on the face of the 2 fish. In my experince the cheeks on tapas are copper. Where as the cheeks on araguaia are white or olive in color depending on mood and feed. I feel the pic Laz posted acuratly depicted that. I almost feel we need to set up another 8X2X2 next to the 1st Laz. Then fill it with 50 araguaia fry, so we can compare the 2 species at all the dif. points of development, to finally get this id'ing thing sorted once and for all.

[Ronny]

Another thing that may be worth trying as well, is raising the fry in differant conditions to see how environment affects the colour, growth, etc.

There seems to be alot of debate wether colour can or cannot determine the species so why no try varying the conditions?

[Hood]

I truly do not believe this face color is just a result of conditions and/or food.
I truly believe they are variants of an "orange head" group of geo's.
Just like tocantins, columbian/venesualans, abalios etc. are all part of the altifrons group.
And brachybranchus and rio branco are part of the proximus group.

I also feel it valid to note that there is 3 types of "orange head",
"G.tapajos I" which is the one we are discussing,
"G.araguaia" which we are also discussing,
and "G.tapajos II" which you will find in your books but has the orange/red down it's back,
as opposed to the head.

[STEVEGREEN]

colour is not the answer

i suggest a holotype activity.

take one male of each sp and kill it .

then count all the spines on each fin , then do a scale count , if you guy's arent pissing in your own pockets about this , this is where you will start.

unless i have missed something.................

what if the taj's had 11 anal fin spines and the ara's 13 , surely this would be the end of it

this is how it's done in the real world.

but , being no expert i may have missed something , just trying to help , too many factors influence colour , most holotype photos are in black and white and have been used to identify cichlids since day one.

Cheers
Steve Green

ps. i believe Murdoch Uni has a facility to do just that , all you Geo heads chuck in $50 each and you may be able to cover the bill....... providing there is more than 20 of you

[Ronny]

I truly do not believe this face color is just a result of conditions and/or food.
I truly believe they are variants of an "orange head" group of geo's.
Just like tocantins, columbian/venesualans, abalios etc. are all part of the altifrons group.
And brachybranchus and rio branco are part of the proximus group.

I also feel it valid to note that there is 3 types of "orange head",
"G.tapajos I" which is the one we are discussing,
"G.araguaia" which we are also discussing,
and "G.tapajos II" which you will find in your books but has the orange/red down it's back,
as opposed to the head.

I see what you're saying here but having said that,

The species may have differant colours which differentiate the three, BUT regardless the species, they will colour differantly in differant water parameters.
Its been proven by keepers before with other fish and I think even you yourself will agree, if you put a fish in crap water, it won't colour up as much, if you put a fish in good water conditions it will look OK, but put a fish in IDEAL conditions, the fish could look like a completely diffrant fish.

One example of this,
when I purchased 6 Brachybranchus from a PCS member, 2 of them were kept in a softer water tank, these two were stunners, colour, size, fine extensions, everything.
They looked like a completely differant fish compared to the other 4 of the same species which were kept in a harder water tank.
The fish I'm talkin about are now in the same tank and have all coloured up nicely and look the same.

An experiment from another member who has the geo formerly known as abalios also shows, that when the PH of the water was dropped, the colours became more intense, in particular, the reds.
However, that could also be an age/maturity factor that has intensified the colours. (I'll let you decide, I'm a lil unsure of this myself)

That's what I was getting at when I said to trial the fish in differant parameters, to see what conditions bring out the true colours of the fish.

Without seeing the true colours, it makes it even harder to identify the fish, especially if colour is a method of ID.

[Poncho]

Hood I didn't mistake what you were saying about cheeks (operculum) and I'm not disputing that there are differences in orange heads going around. I'm asking what the reasons are for you and others thinking that these differences are due to one being from lineage of fish caught from araguaia and the other from tapajos - as opposed to some of the other possibilities I have listed, which whether likely or not, are plausible and not to be considered just in isolation. Just stating that you believe it to be so doesn't do much to convince me - I'd like to know why you think it's true.

[ozarowana]

I also feel it valid to note that there is 3 types of "orange head",
"G.tapajos I" which is the one we are discussing,
"G.araguaia" which we are also discussing,
and "G.tapajos II" which you will find in your books but has the orange/red down it's back,
as opposed to the head.

I also believe there are 3 "orange head" types but G. sp. "Tapajos" (or "Tapajos II") isn't one of them. It is clearly a different fish altogether. There is most likely a Xingu variant though.

colour is not the answer

i suggest a holotype activity.

take one male of each sp and kill it .

then count all the spines on each fin , then do a scale count , if you guy's arent pissing in your own pockets about this , this is where you will start.

unless i have missed something.................

what if the taj's had 11 anal fin spines and the ara's 13 , surely this would be the end of it

this is how it's done in the real world.

but , being no expert i may have missed something , just trying to help , too many factors influence colour , most holotype photos are in black and white and have been used to identify cichlids since day one.

Cheers
Steve Green

ps. i believe Murdoch Uni has a facility to do just that , all you Geo heads chuck in $50 each and you may be able to cover the bill....... providing there is more than 20 of you

I don't think one of each type will cut it given the intraspecific variation present and given the fact that everyone believes they are the same species anyway. How do we know that what we call Tapas or Araguaia are even the said variant and haven't been crossed? How about everyone chip in $1k each (x20) and I'll do a trip to Brazil and catch them in location and do the counts there for you guys. Granted this is a PART of how it's done in the real world, but a molecular marker approach is also used these days... maybe due to the meristic approach not being robust? I doubt people are going to send in fin clippings to get their fish identified at a big cost.

Hood I didn't mistake what you were saying about cheeks (operculum) and I'm not disputing that there are differences in orange heads going around. I'm asking what the reasons are for you and others thinking that these differences are due to one being from lineage of fish caught from araguaia and the other from tapajos - as opposed to some of the other possibilities I have listed, which whether likely or not, are plausible and not to be considered just in isolation. Just stating that you believe it to be so doesn't do much to convince me - I'd like to know why you think it's true.

I think the main reason is that there are unrelated pictures of the Tapajos variant showing this characteristic. However like I said before it appears not all/many fish from the Tapajos get this.

The reason I believe the caudal peduncle stripe is significant is that it is present in wild caught Tapajos (Bleher's discus book shows this) and many fish show this.

Some identification links
http://www.practical...?article_id=201
http://www.practical...?article_id=203
http://www.practical...?article_id=204