Laetacara identification - Updated with Pics

[Evan]

What is the best reference for identifying the various Laetacara species?

I have not been able to find much in the way of identification. I have mostly just found references to Kullander(1986) but I am not sure if that is a paper or his book.

Does anyone have any advice?

[Dean Hougen]

Take pics and post them here. Honestly, that is the best way to ID them.


Dean

[Evan]

Your probably right. But if I do it that way, I won't learn anything.

[Florent]

Maybe it can help.

http://globiz.sachsen.de/snsd/publikati ... _63-71.pdf

[Lisachromis]

Your probably right. But if I do it that way, I won't learn anything.

Actually you can.

Ask whomever is IDing them to explain WHY they are what they say they are.

[Mike Wise]

There are presently only 6 (possibly 7) Laetacara species. It should be easy to Google photos of each species:
L. curviceps (+ L. cf. curviceps Surinam), L. dorsigera, L. flavilabris, L. fulvipinnis (= sp. Orangeflossen), L. thayeri, & L. sp. Buckelkopf/Humphead. In English (or German) Römer's "Cichlid Atlas 1" is the best place to read about the different species and how to identify them.

[Evan]

There are presently only 6 (possibly 7) Laetacara species. It should be easy to Google photos of each species:
L. curviceps (+ L. cf. curviceps Surinam), L. dorsigera, L. flavilabris, L. fulvipinnis (= sp. Orangeflossen), L. thayeri, & L. sp. Buckelkopf/Humphead. In English (or German) Römer's "Cichlid Atlas 1" is the best place to read about the different species and how to identify them.

Thanks Mike. I will check it out.

[Evan]

OK,

When I purchased this group I thought I had a trio of L. flavilabris.

Now that they have grown out a little I am starting to think I have 1 male flavilabris and 2 other laetacara.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.

I am sorry for the pics....I could not get a good shot of these guys. If these are not good enough I will remove the plants and try again.

Fish 1 - Male flavilabris?

Flavilabris male?

Fish 2 - Male?

Fish 3 - This appears to be a female

[Darrell Ullisch]

Fish #1 is the dominant fish. That doesn't necessarily mean male, but usually is. Fish #2 and #3 are subdominants, possibly male on #2, but that's purely a guess. #3 is being harassed, this is the reason for the torn fins, and could be at risk from my experience. I hope the tank is large, as these fish are not the typical "dwarf" species, and are pretty bad about intraspecific aggression.

I have found a lot of confusion over thayeri and flavilabris, but I question the ID of many of the photos that are out there on these two species. The names are often assigned to collected specimens without cautious investigation first.

I had a group of 7 of these fish in 2005-06, purchased as thayeri, and only one dominant fish showed that pattern in a small tank (15 gallons) where they were held for the first 2 months. When moved to a long 30 gallon, a second fish colored up, and the two split the territory between them. One of them spawned once with a small female (eggs did not survive), the other was killed by what I had thought was another female, but it then took on dominance coloration and started harassing the other dominant fish. Not long after, I had a disaster that caused me to lose the entire tank.

I will try to post some shots of my fish later. Need to resize them first.

[Mike Wise]

To me it looks like you have 2 males and 1 female L. flavilabris. Small specimens of L. flavilabris & L. thayer can be hard to distinguish. To compound the problem, their distribution (but not biotopes) overlap. L. thayeri (when compared to L. flavilarbris) has a deeper body. The black patch on the middle of the flanks extends almost to the top of the dorsal fins, forming a dorsal fin blotch. L. flavilabris, although visibly larger than the dwarf species of the genus, has the same general shape as the other species. The black patch on the middle of the flanks sometimes extends into the dorsal fin, but only just barely. L. flavilabris doesn't show a dorsal fin blotch. This species usually has a pale yellow lower lip, but dominant males often show a pink lip. L. flavilabris is a blackwater species; L. thayeri comes from white- & clearwater streams for the most part. You can't miss noticing when L. flavilabris spawns (prefers to lay on leaves of Amazon Swordplants). The entire head region turns deep black. I only kept this species once, about 25 years ago. They came in as bi-catches in a shipment of wild Neon Tetras.

[Lisachromis]

Great explanation Mike.

Those fish bring back memories for me. I had a group of flavilabris years ago. Unfortunately I never got them to breed before a weird disease came and wiped out almost every fish in the tank they were in. I think I only had one survive. 6 flavilabris and 6-7 Melanotaenia parkinsoni. I don't recall if I had catfish in that tank anymore. I do remember being extremely upset. I didn't trust the tank anymore, so I gave it to my brother who kept snakes in it after that.

[Darrell Ullisch]

Well, I said I'd post some shots, so here are a couple.

This is the fish I had, from Mike's description I'd say it was most likely flavilabris. This was the original dominant fish of the group, they were about 1.5 inches (not quite 4 cm) when I got them, and he colored up almost immediately.

This is the same individual a little more mature, note the soft dorsal extensions. At this point he was around 2.75 inches (about 7 cm). His preferred partner at this point also had the extensions, but did not get dark. The angle of this shot doesn't show all the color.

Laetacara flavilabris02.JPG (77.19 KiB) Viewed 2431 times

[Paulo José Alves]

Hi

Where´s from the deepest red form of L. dorsigerus? I think that Staeck told me that the redest form is from Argentina but I´m not sure that we were speaking about the same form. I´ve seen at least two other forms of this species, one almost black and the other with just some light red in the chest area. The ones I had and want to have again were deep wine dark red in all the lower part of the body. I´m going to receive some next friday ofthe Bolivia form to see if they are the ones I want.

[Bas Pels]

I hope they are not from Argentina: Export of fish from most of northern Argentina is banned

However, if they are from an Argentinian border region, almost the same fish might be found acros the border - perhaps in a country which is more friendly to fish export (A huge part of argentinian borders are with Brasil, not the easiest country to export from, but most of the rules are to protect the Amazonian nature, and might not apply to other parts of the country)

[Paulo José Alves]

Thanks Bas, however I know that until recently there was export of wildfish from Argentina and Jeff rapps has right now wild L. dorsigerus from Argentina that a friend of mine is going to order in November.