Can you help me identify my fish?

[JenAndBritt]

Hi, I need some help identifying these fish. I was recently told that they are two totally different species. The larger one has a vertical black mark through both its eyes and has six dark vertical bars on its body. The smaller one, lacks the mark through the eye and has a lihgt bar through each of the six dark bars. They are both iradescent blue but the larger one has a slash of bright blue on its face. They look soooo similar, but now that some users of cichlid forums have pointed these differences out I am wondering if I do indeed have two very different fish. I bought them as a pair from Big Al's They were mislabled from the star, but I really liked there look. They are Geophagus sp?
I have a substrate of small aquarium gravel, they seem to sift it just fine... I have been told that they like sand. But I prefer the gravel and they seem no worse for where and quite enjoy "vaccuuming" it for me, =)

Any help is appriciated

[JenAndBritt]

looking online I found that the one with the blue dash on its face and the vertical line through its eyes is "Geophagus argyrostictus" What do you think the other one might be?



This picture is from http://aquavisie.retry.org/Database/Vis ... ictus.html
Looking at another interesting page http://www.cichlides.com/viewtopic.php?t=11354 I found that the orange head has those same dark bars spilt by light bars... perhaps the smaller one is just a young orange head? or maybe Geophagus sp."Areões" / "Rio das Mortes" Anyways, I highly reccomend checking out this link! Great photos and all organized by species... It is not in english but still very great and easy to figure out.

[Lisachromis]

For those that can't see the above image - http://aquavisie.retry.org/Database/Vis ... tictus.jpg

[Bas Pels]

I tend to assume the pics are showing the same two fishes

Well, the bigger one, in pic 1 on the left, is a G arosticticus, or closely related (some people say the arosticticus is limited to the Rio Xingu and thus the other tearstripe eartheaters must be other species). Apart from the tearstripe, the yellow markings around the black dot give the species away. This is a species from fast moving waters, a full substrate breeder.

The other one is harder to name. It could be a G altifrons, which species is an ovophile breeder, but also another, related species. Many Geo species look quite similar at 3 inches. But it is 100 % certain not a G arosticticus