110 replies to this topic

[Hood]

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 didn't state my belief to convince anybody. I was merely stating my stand point in this debate. Gees... Take a chill pill guys! And I never said color was the end answer for all of this, just that there was one obvious diference here, that I believe is not just a result of environmental conditions. I also observe other diferences between these fish, but I will talk about these later.

[Hood]

Cheers Chuongy! what do you believe is the 3rd variant by the way?

[STEVEGREEN]

no prob's , totally dismiss my post , thats fine , but dont expect too many contributors if it is only going to be observational behavoir and colouration because that meens jack!!!!!

maybe if you were in Brazil looking at wild caughts .

goodluck boys , but 5 people big noting them selves in regards to how much they know aint going to get you any where , start counting fins , then scales , then you may be suprized at what you find ..........or


lets have another 600 posts about colour and end the post to agree to disagree

that will be totally worth it


will this "investigation" have any scientific content or be merely heresay?

Cheers
Steve Green

[Hood]

(STEVEGREEN @ Apr 15 2009, 06:39 PM)
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.

Hey Stevegreen, I'm pretty sure ozarrowana respoded to your post aswell mate.
No-one is discounting ur input.
I think what he was saying was that it is just not good enough to do this to our tank bred fish, as there is to much variation in our broods.
I believe he was proposing we pitch in and send him to south america, to get him to do a study on the wild fish. Lol

[ozarowana]

Cheers Chuongy! what do you believe is the 3rd variant by the way?

Xingu... makes sense as this river lies in between the Tocantins/Araguaia and the Tapajos on the southern bank.
There's a pic of it on Larry's site under the name Geophagus sp. “Xingu”

[Hood]

Xingu... makes sense as this river lies in between the Tocantins/Araguaia and the Tapajos on the southern bank.
There's a pic of it on Larry's site under the name Geophagus sp. “Xingu”

nice! Thanks mate! I did not realise that the Xingu was the 3rd proposed "orange head" variant.

[LC60]

no prob's , totally dismiss my post , thats fine , but dont expect too many contributors if it is only going to be observational behavoir and colouration because that meens jack!!!!!
maybe if you were in Brazil looking at wild caughts .
goodluck boys , but 5 people big noting them selves in regards to how much they know aint going to get you any where , start counting fins , then scales , then you may be suprized at what you find ..........or
lets have another 600 posts about colour and end the post to agree to disagree
that will be totally worth it
will this "investigation" have any scientific content or be merely heresay?

Cheers
Steve Green

\

Hi Steve,

You have brought up some valid points, I plan to respond to everyone here, and each point that they make. I will start posting my responses over the weekend, tonight I have water changes to do. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you showed a bit of patience, everyone who has posted on here so far has made some valid points and they will all be "investigated" first through the literature and I'll make sure that everything I say is either referenced or backed up with photograghic evidence. We need to have some direction though and the points that are being made now are where we will start, the people who have posted on here already, are giving this study it's direction, so that we can proceed to work our way through the literature with purpose and direction, so they are already making important contributions to this study. Your first post contributes to this as well. However, regarding this other post, I fail to see what scientific contribution can be made by throwing a tantrum because your feeling ignored. Show some patience and respect for the effort people are making here, please.

Cheers
Laz

[STEVEGREEN]

fair call Laz .

maybe i need to stop looking too far into the future. ( should play chess instead )

i just relize that it is not in your own interest to reveal your fish are hybrids , if , that is the case , i have seen this done before by people to discredit other peoples fish and promote thier own . i'll stop commenting and just start reading . this project will seperate the men from the boys.

good luck

Cheers
Steve Green

[LC60]

fair call Laz .

maybe i need to stop looking too far into the future. ( should play chess instead )

i just relize that it is not in your own interest to reveal your fish are hybrids , if , that is the case , i have seen this done before by people to discredit other peoples fish and promote thier own . i'll stop commenting and just start reading . this project will seperate the men from the boys.

good luck

Cheers
Steve Green

Steve, your suggestion here regarding hybrids could indeed have some merit, if that were the case, I would want to know. I am not trying to discredit anyone elses fish, I simply want to get to the truth about these fish, if we can. With regard to the fish that is in both pic 1 and 2, I am confident that it is a true and pure G. sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head", I am also very confident that the breeding pair in the new thread I'm starting on behaviour are pure of strain.and I have no reason to think that the other orange heads from other sources are anything less than pure. I suppose a relevant point here is that a cross between the two variants could only result in a hybrid if the two variants were different species, and if these are all locality variants of the one species as in the case of altifrons, well there is the risk of losing the pure strains of these variants. While most authorities seem to be of the opinion that these are indeed all locality variants of the one specie, I don't think we can discount the possibility of different species within this group until science has had the opportunity to describe them. In any case we need to be clarify the id issue before proceeding.
Cheers
Laz

[ozarowana]

I think what he was saying was that it is just not good enough to do this to our tank bred fish, as there is to much variation in our broods.

My point was that

1. Even within a single species there is variation in scale and fin ray counts, wildcaught or not.
2. I'm pretty sure 99% of geo enthusiasts believe Tapajos and Araguaia are the same species, just different variants.
3. Given points 1 and 2 I'm not so sure if this approach will tell us anything.

p.s. So are we sending me to Brazil?

[Hood]

My point was that

1. Even within a single species there is variation in scale and fin ray counts, wildcaught or not.
2. I'm pretty sure 99% of geo enthusiasts believe Tapajos and Araguaia are the same species, just different variants.
3. Given points 1 and 2 I'm not so sure if this approach will tell us anything.

p.s. So are we sending me to Brazil?

oh, ok, I guess... But only if I can come too! Man, I'd love to see these things in the wild!!

[STEVEGREEN]

"Even within a single species there is variation in scale and fin ray counts, wildcaught or not"

do you have any evidence to back up that statement???

cause id sure as hell love to see it

Cheers
Steve Green

[ozarowana]

"Even within a single species there is variation in scale and fin ray counts, wildcaught or not"

do you have any evidence to back up that statement???

cause id sure as hell love to see it

Cheers
Steve Green

http://www.cichlid-f..._sapayensis.php
"Further, the published meristics for the various species are quite similar; the dorsal and anal fm spine/ray counts of 'Ae.'; coeruleopunctatus and 'Ae.' sapayensis overlap entirely. (See Table.) The case is probably even worse than suggested by the numbers in the original descriptions. Now that many more specimens are generally examined when describing a species, it is recognized that spine and ray counts can vary widely within a species. In the recently described 'Ae.' patricki, to chose an example from the true Aequidens, specimens are recorded with dorsal counts of 14-18 hard spines and 10-12 soft rays.2 If these sorts of variances are found in species of 'Aequidens' as well, it might well be impossible to assign an individual fish to any of these species on the basis of spine and ray counts alone."

http://www.practical...?article_id=203
"The range covered, 10-12 here, shows the typical counts seen across the species, something called intraspecific variation. Importantly, not all members of the same species are identical!"

http://txspace.tamu....dle/1969.1/1129
"Fins. Dorsal XVIII-10(1), XVIII-11(4), XVIII-12(2), XIX-10(2), XIX-11(5), XIX-1(1); anal III-7(2), III-8(13)."

15 fish measured (numbers in brackets add to 15).
Roman numerals = Hard rays
Normal numerals = Soft rays
Have a read as there are three species described and the random example I selected was probably the one with the least variation. Nature doesn't conform .

[LC60]

"Even within a single species there is variation in scale and fin ray counts, wildcaught or not"

do you have any evidence to back up that statement???

cause id sure as hell love to see it

Cheers
Steve Green

Steve, I think that you need to have a look at this site http://eartheaters.q...x.php?page=main , this is Ozarowana''s site, he knows what he's talking about with geos and science.

[LC60]

Ok, I'm starting my responses now, I appreciate your patience and I'm rapt in the responses so far, I'll do my best to get to each posting in turn..

I'd like to start with an important point that Steve raised:

"goodluck boys , but 5 people big noting them selves in regards to how much they know aint going to get you any where , start counting fins , then scales , then you may be suprized at what you find ..........or lets have another 600 posts about colour and end the post to agree to disagree that will be totally worth it will this "investigation" have any scientific content or be merely heresay? Steve"

First off Steve, thanks for your input, your posts have raised some important points that I would like to address:

With regard to the question of credibility we are all hobbyists, all end users of the ornamental fish industry. We are the guys who keep the fish, study them, breed them and learn about them. So I see all of us on these forums as a potential resource to both newcomers and experienced breeders alike. I think that we all have knowledge and experience that could be of significance to share within the hobby. We have already identified some information regarding some spawning behaviours of these fish that I haven't seen in any literature, this information didn't disprove or challenge what was already out there, it simply added a little bit more to what we know about these fish. We identified that orange heads of both types will spawn on vertical as well as horizontal surfaces, and this was replicated by Poncho, we also identified that these fish spit sand over their eggs sometimes, this was verified by 3 breeders and we have speculated as to why that may be. I am not seeking in any way to discredit any of the work already done by researchers, scientists, authors, etc. I just think that there is information and experience from us, the hobbyist/breeders that might add to the work that has already been done.

I have begun another thread in the cichlid discussion forum that will be a pictorial and descriptive spawning sequence beginning with pair bond formation through to (atm) both parents holding(I stripped the fry from both parents tonight, 22-04-09), focusing on behaviour, but I've still got about 500 pics to sort through , there are many successful breeders among us, I think this gives us credibility to begin with, and we can back up our observations with photographic evidence, therefore not heresay, also as already mentioned we need to conduct an exhaustive review of all relevant literature. So, I'm going to keep working between this thread and the other oh thread until I catch up .

One other point that Cicolid brought up, (and welcome Col, thanks for your support):

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

Col has identified himself as a learner, meaning he is new to geos, the thing is Col, I'm a learner too, and the primary reason for me going to this effort is to learn more about these fish:

I know that Col has a wealth of knowledge and experience keeping and breeding cichlids for many years. And now a new type has caught his attention and he wants to learn about them. Sounds familiar don't it. Anyway, we're all learners here, so lets work together and learn together and hopefully solve some of the puzzles around these fish. With the confusion and relatively limited information available on this species, the need for study and new information is readily apparent: just look at the interest already generated by our posts here. I think that in itself is significant. Look at the quality of the information and fish already posted here.

I am confident that together we are competent to complete this research/study/article.

And the quality of the information posted on this thread has already proved it to be worthwhile.

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,

Fiirst cab off the rank , thanks mate I appreciate your support.

Spot on Josh, the thing with this as I see it is: Looking at the fish on the right in Pic 1 and we are saying here that this is a G. sp. "Tapajos" 'Orange Head' and then the fish on left in Pic 1, stating that is a G. sp. "Araguaia"'Orange Head'. Ok, the colouration is different between these two fish, there are obvious differences, it looks like a no brainer.

So First up: what is the problem here?

How come there is confusion about the correct id of these two variants not just across australia but across the globe too it seems.

How come in Perth, all geos that have an orange head are sold as 'Tapajos'?

Is it simply the case that all 'Orange Heads' in Perth are in fact true 'Tapajos'?

See Ozarowana's post # ? with regard to the topic of head colouration.

(And see Heiko's post on page 3 with regard to ID.)

[japes]

Hey guys,

Good to see some serious debate going on regarding this species, as I've felt for a while now that many of the so called Tapajos variant getting around are very much like the Araguaia variant, or for that matter - what most enthusiasts consider the Araguaia variant, especially when compared to Keith's specimens which are featured in the original post for comparisons sake (and a perfect example at that).

My initial concerns regarding the definitive identification of these species or variants is whether there has been any noted situations where what are believed to be the two different variants have mated either here or overseas? I have heard from word of mouth that there have been here in Australia, but as far as I'm aware there are no reported cases where Geophagus or other Eartheaters have showed any signs of willingness to mate with members of another species from the same Genus, even altifrons locale variants - unlike many more what you could call 'standard' American species, which will do so in some community situations.

While it's hard to deny that the internet is certainly the absolute best resource tool for the beginner and enthusiast aquarist alike, regarding Orange Heads I'm not entirely sure. With Orange Heads being such a flagship species for Eartheater keeping worldwide, many of the information is hugely skewed by keepers that don't know any better, and I imagine a large population of those keeping sp. "Orange Heads" aren't aware that an Araguaia variant even exists. Thankfully, the luxury of Wild Caught Cichlid imports in the United States allows us to have examples of what true wild caught Tapajos actually look like. I frequent a few American dominated forums and practically all of the Orange Heads are labelled as Tapajos variants - these simply can't be trusted.

Pictured below are Wild Caught Geophagus sp. "Orange Head Tapajos" supplied by Ken at fishfarm - Fish are 3-3.5" (7.5-9cm).





(Pictured in the background is what we think may be Keiths unidentified altifrons variant, also a wild caught specimen from the Rio Tapajos.)





More photographs available in the thread here - http://www.monsterfi...ghlight=tapajos

These fish all exhibit the copper cheeks similiar to Keiths Tapajos pictured in the original post, although judging by the amount of red already showing in the head these are all males as well. Whether this is brought out especially with flash used in the photographs I'm not sure, but compare them to my 5-7cm Geophagus sp. "Araguaia Orange Head" photographs (Non-flash) that I'm growing up currently.







Some nice red starting to develop above the mouth and along the forehead between the eyes, but the cheeks are purely plain, or slightly fluorescent like the sp. "Araguaia Orange Head" of Keith's in the comparison photo in the original post.

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.

Pictured above is an F1 Geophagus sp. "Tapajos Orange Head" supplied by a name some of you may be familiar with, Ed Burress. Even at that size, which I'd estimate to be around 6cm, you can clearly see the red lining present between the dorsal and caudal fin, and I definitely think ozarowana is onto something with this characteristic, as it's certainly not visible in person, non-flash, or flash photographs of my similarly sized and head coloured sp. "Araguaia Orange Head" juveniles.

I've been in and out of threads sourcing all of these information so my direction is a little wayward, but I hope this helps.

Ryan.

[LC60]

Hi Japes, and welcome to the forum, excellent input mate, thank you, beautiful fish, I'd very much like to discuss your post soon, it's so good to see some more genuine wild caught 'Tapajos' in this country.

BRB

Cheers
Laz

[japes]

Hi Japes, and welcome to the forum, excellent input mate, thank you, beautiful fish, I'd very much like to discuss your post soon, it's so good to see some more genuine wild caught 'Tapajos' in this country.

BRB

Cheers
Laz

Hey Laz,

Just to clarify, none of the fish I've pictured other than my own Araguaia variants are in Australia - they're all American, but true and confirmed F0 or F1 specimens from America for comparisons sake. Sorry to disappoint or get any hopes up, I should have made this clear in my initial response.

Cheers,
Ryan.

[LC60]

Hey Laz,

Just to clarify, none of the fish I've pictured other than my own Araguaia variants are in Australia - they're all American, but true and confirmed F0 or F1 specimens from America for comparisons sake. Sorry to disappoint or get any hopes up, I should have made this clear in my initial response.

Cheers,
Ryan.

No worries Ryan and thanks for clearing that up. so far it's looking like these fish are pretty scarce here in Aus. Can anyone disagree with that?

It's great to see involvement from the eastern states guys. The way I work is to continually go back between the different threads I'm working on to edit and update as I go. I'll respond to Hood now (see above^)

[LC60]

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