Apistogramma id's

[Erik82]

Hi All,
a few weeks ago I imported some Apistogramma. The were caught arround Rio Orinoco. most of them are possibel A. iniridae. But some of them I can not Identify. Can some help me on the fish below? It looks like a A. Iniridae but the shhape of the
Fish 1

Fish 2 (my thoughts are A. inirade male...?)

Also some fish I got from the LFS. I realy don't know what kind of fish it is. They look like a normall A. baenschi but I not sure about that. Also the look like females but together they have typical male-female behaviour. Can someone help me on Idintify the A. cf. beanschii? Are they only females or is there one male that forgot he's an male

Regards,
Erik

 

[MickeM]

Hi Erik..

I believe your cf. baenschi looks like they are all females..
My experience with breeding Ap. baenschi is that they look very specific "male" or "female" at an early stage in life..(1-2cm)
However..I have seen pale wild specimens in my Local Fish Store..

But the massive black in the ventral fins+the dorsal.. and the black bars on the sides of the body are often so typical on baenschi females.. much more blue if they are males...
I have changed the water temp several times to get an acceptable ratio between males/females when breeding...

My LFS owner said that he often got only females ( 1:9/2:8 , male:female ) or the other way around.. several times when purchasing 10 wild Apistos...!!
Not an ideal situation...

I hope you can get some males from where you got the other ones ...or that my gender ID is totaly wrong..!!

Good luck!!

/MickeM

 

[Mike Wise]

Fish 1 looks like a typical A. iniridae to me. Fish 2 doesn't show many diagnostic features in the photo. My guess right now is that it's a young male (based on length of ventrals and prominence of caudal pattern) of an iniridae-group species. Which species, I can't say from these 2 photos (and the possible lack of maturity of the fish).