Geophagus Id

[malfunction]

Ok, so I tried to be good and refrain from buying any more fish...that didn't work out so well as I picked up these 4 little guys yesterday:





They were sold to me as Geophagus altifrons. Can anyone confirm/refute? Here are a few more photos....

 

[Wills]

Pretty sure they are Altifrons but... that cheek mark and the prominent body stripes make me think they might be Winemilleri? Let them settle a few days and post some more pictures
 
Wills

 

[malfunction]

I should've said - the bottom photo is one of them with a couple of my winemilleri - sorry about the confusion. It's the smallest one (the fish in the middle) in that bottom photo that's suppose to be altifrons. I'll upload some more photos in the week though.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I'm far from an expert, but those 3 fish in the last photo all appear to be the same species to me...  Again though, I am FAR from an expert, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

 

[malfunction]

Thanks for the input eagles...they're definitely two different soevies though (winemilleri is one of the few eartheaters I can identify). The trouble with eartheaters is many of them look frustratingly similar!

 

[sawickib]

Yea, id say none of those are winemilleri, as they are missing just a lot of red, my winemilleri at that age only have red coloration instead of that patterning. They look a lot like geophagus abalios to.

Wait you say one is a winemilleri, huh none of mine look like that, maybe those are older than mine so thats showing up? idk 

You know what im afraid im not much help either haha this is my winemilleri a few months ago.

 

 
And this is now

 

 

[Wills]

The best way to ID Winemilleri is by the chin strap as there are few species that have them so well defined I think one of the only other common species that has it is Discroziter (Spelling sorry) but yours are still young Sawik so give them chance
 
Looking back at your Malfunction I would say they are Altifrons so they will end up quite a lot bigger than the Winemilleri However it will be interesting to see how they grow as there are huge regional variances. This site is good for seeing the exact variants you have but will take a while until they are bigger to see exactly what you have. http/www.raubwelse.de/galerie/cichliden/cichliden.htm
 
Wills

 

[malfunction]

Saw, I think yours is definitely a winemilleri. In addition to what Wills said about the preopercular marking, you can also identify them by their stress bands. Winemilleri generally have 4 solid bands on their flanks (young specimens have 5) and the eyespot is always on the second band from the head. Nice pictures btw (very jealous here!)

Thanks for that link, Wills. Unfortunately mine don't look like any of the variants on the site - they must be too young, so I'll have to wait until they're older like you suggested.

 

[Liam2368]

Very hard to see the picture on my phone but if I had to have an educated guess I would go for geophagus abalios but I bought some geophagus megasema and the markings look quite similar to the ones you have.
This is one of the geoohagus I have that was labelled megasema.