hemichromis

[coltiger]

I just saw fishtankers topic and it struck something in me...

Hemichromis are pretty hard fish to identify, for me...when I work at Aqua Tropicale in Montreal they got some of the dwarf Jewels in, they were supposed to be less aggressive than their big brothers...well it turns out they were misidentified...does anyone know how to identify the hemichromis, I have a real hard time with any single one when they are babies

[tjudy]

Babies are tough. EVen adults can be difficult, because there are numerous hybrids and the distinguishing features are not always obvious (breeding colors vs. stress colors vs. normal colors). Even Anton Lamboj's books has several pictures of red jewels that are captioned 'undetermined Hemichromis'. Overall though I would say that Lamboj's book is currently the best source for ID of the jewels.

[coltiger]

I do remember when I had some large South American cichlids, I did buy a few jewels most of them looked alike not knowing much.

In the end I only had one left, the fish was about 4 inches long and had managed to survive and kill off the rest of the jewels. Then one day I saw this Jewel that was labeled as a green Jewel...I bought it thinking "hey that must be a female"

Yes it did pair up with my red Jewel, it was only until my friend Robert pointed out that they were two different species...I separated them to avoid a possible hybrid.

Iam guessing alot of the jewels are hybrids, which I try to avoid doing.

[tjudy]

Many farm-raise jewels are hybrids, and so are many in hobbyists tanks. Noone knows the true origins of the 'tuquoise green' jewel. It may be a hybrid, or it may be a line-bred selected color form.

[coltiger]

This might be hard to find an answer but I saw a hemichromis species, I swore it said samba but that didn't make sense to me...anyways the second name begins with an s I could not find any fish with that letter any ideas?

[tjudy]

Simbala maybe? That is one of the unidentified Hemichromis coming out of the Kolente Forest area of Guinae. It is not a red jewel, gets a bit larger than most small jewels and is a prett irridescent green with yellow in the face. This fish has been called H. sp. 'Guinae 2' for a while, as it is in Anton Lambojs' book. I think that the Simbala name was 'created' to make the fish name sound better.

[coltiger]

thats it, I was looking at too many fish to remember all the names...thanks

I almost bought the fish as he looked very nice, he was in a tank with some aequidens sp? and a chocolate cichlid.