Green Terror And Blue Acaras

[chrismr]

Well, I got all excited last week when I went into the LFS and found what I thought were curviceps. It meant I could finally get a mate for rusty, my lonley male.

Well, pretty much as soon as I put them in the tank I could tell they looked a bit different.... oops. So, after not very long I had to move them in with the firemouths, because rusty was spoiling for a fight.

Now, I was originally sure they were two blue acaras, so I was thinking I might keeop them a little while until I get another tank, but decided in the end I will take them back this weekend.

I am beginning to think that one of them may be a green terror, and the other might be a blue acara.

The one I think is the blue acara male has golden eyes, with the pointed fins.

The one I think is a female terror, has more reddish eyes. And she is an aggressive little thing. She tries to pick on everything. The firemouths keep her in line though.

Do female green terrors also have an orange band on the caudal fin? They are both around 2 inches or so, and there colours are not really bright enough to say one way or another what they are.

I would like to know how to tell the younger fish apart as I am still planning on getting another tank, and once I do would like to go back and get blue acaras, if that is what some of them are.

The guys in the LFS I don't think will be much good to me as even when I was looking at them and talking about them I was referring to them as curviceps and was not corrected.....

 

[scrappy]

I had exactly this problem when i bought my Terrors a year or so ago, they were sold to me as Blue Acara juveniles, however i have discovered since then through the fact they have matured into adult colours that they were in fact Green Terrors. I have a new DSLR camera being delivered tomorrow and ill be hopefully taking some pictures of my cichlids to test it out. My Terrors are a pair that have bred a few times so i know they are defintly a male & female.

I will try post some better pictures tomorrow for you to help you out, but these two are older pictures of my Terrors, they are not the best but I did use a standard Sony DSC which isnt designed even in macro mode to take the perfect pictures.

Female

Male

I havent been able to snap a pic of my Acara yet, Hopefully tomorrow with a new better camera
What i will say though is that they are slightly a lighter shade (almost silvery as juvenile) and definitely have a more prominent black eye stripe (you can see from the pics above that Terrors eye stripes are almost invisible)

I will update this tomorrow if i get some good snaps of my fish.

 

[chrismr]

That picture of the female you posted looks just like the one I think is a female terror....

Still not sure about the other fish though. still think it could be a male pulcher. Just not easy to be sure.

Either way, they are back to the store tomorrow. Pity, as I am quite growing to like the nasty little little thing

Thanks for the info and pics!

 

[scrappy]

Well as promised I have my new camera and ive taken a few shots, not played with any settings just point and clicked for these shots.

Mature Terrors (Male & Female, im sure you can tell which is which)

Juvenile Acara (Sex unknown but I suspect a Male)

You may now be able to tell why I have found it easier to differntiate them now. The colour of the eye and the eye stripe is more prominent on the Acara in my opinion.

They are RAW pictures straight from the camera (only cropped and resized to fit here). You can already see the difference between the picture qaulity.

 

[DazedNCoNfUsEd]

I have the same problem now too, sorta. My LFS ordered some Blue Acaras but when they came in they put them in a tank with some juvenile green terrors and black belts. And of course they don't know what is what. I spent like 2 hours looking at pics of GT's, Acaras and Black Belts. One thing that sets GTs and Acaras apart is the orange on the tail fin of the GTs. Acaras only seem to have that coloring on their dorsal fin.

I'm gonna go back to the store tomorrow and hopefully pick out an Acara successfully. I'm almost positive the ones they told me were Acaras were the Black Belts, after looking at pics. Anyways good luck.

 

[JCA]

scrappy what size were those gold saums when you were able to sex them?

 

[chrismr]

Nic epics by the way scrappy

What the camera? Could do with a new one myself some day!

 

[scrappy]

When i first got them both they were about 2" in length and not so long afterwards, about a month or so i noticed one started to grow at a rate far faster than the other (or so it seemed) so i would have to say they were probably about 2.5"

The male then came out in much finer colour, firstly i noticed he started getting the irredecsent greenish sheen on his scales then i noticed the purple/blue flecks develop in him, the female however has always remained quite dull in comparison and quite a bit smaller and has NO purple/blue flecks on her fins at all, only the orange tips.

The camera is a Canon EOS 350D.