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Severum advice

Aqua410

Members
So I recently got two severum that I was expecting to be Heros sp. Rotkeils but once I got them settled in they were showing 9 stress bars. It is widely considered that all true Rotkeils have 8 bars. This was no big deal since I paid very little from the fish and got them locally. Because the fish had 9 bars I suspect they are Heros efaciatus.

On my quest to get some true Rotkeils, I decided to place an order with WetSpot as they seem to always have interesting and hard to find severum. The fish arrived this morning and all look healthy but sadly have 9 bars and look identical to the first group of fish! They're so similar I can't tell them apart in the tank.

One of two things seems to have happened. First scenario is that not enough information is available to verify that all Rotkeils have only 8 stress bars. Second scenario is that ultimately both sets of fish came from the same source and were misidentified before being passed along to the two distributors. They are so close in appearance and size it seems very likely that scenario two may have unfolded. As mentioned, I wasn't upset at all about the first two fish because they were so cheap I figured well I'll just give them to a club member who wants to grow out some nice efaciatus. Unfortunately for the new fish I paid a good sum of money to have them overnighted from Portland. I contacted WetSpot to see if they would comment but haven't heard back yet. I could basically grow out all four un-indentified severums and see how they look in 6 months but I'm worried my grow out tank is too small for this. I currently have 1 chocolate cichlid and 7 severums all between 1 and 3 inches growing out in a 75 so it's going to get crowded fast. This has been a some what frustrating week for fish keeping.
 

rsanz

monster tank newbie
So I recently got two severum that I was expecting to be Heros sp. Rotkeils but once I got them settled in they were showing 9 stress bars. It is widely considered that all true Rotkeils have 8 bars. This was no big deal since I paid very little from the fish and got them locally. Because the fish had 9 bars I suspect they are Heros efaciatus.

On my quest to get some true Rotkeils, I decided to place an order with WetSpot as they seem to always have interesting and hard to find severum. The fish arrived this morning and all look healthy but sadly have 9 bars and look identical to the first group of fish! They're so similar I can't tell them apart in the tank.

One of two things seems to have happened. First scenario is that not enough information is available to verify that all Rotkeils have only 8 stress bars. Second scenario is that ultimately both sets of fish came from the same source and were misidentified before being passed along to the two distributors. They are so close in appearance and size it seems very likely that scenario two may have unfolded. As mentioned, I wasn't upset at all about the first two fish because they were so cheap I figured well I'll just give them to a club member who wants to grow out some nice efaciatus. Unfortunately for the new fish I paid a good sum of money to have them overnighted from Portland. I contacted WetSpot to see if they would comment but haven't heard back yet. I could basically grow out all four un-indentified severums and see how they look in 6 months but I'm worried my grow out tank is too small for this. I currently have 1 chocolate cichlid and 7 severums all between 1 and 3 inches growing out in a 75 so it's going to get crowded fast. This has been a some what frustrating week for fish keeping.

Hi John,

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I came across this thread while searching Google for this very issue. I have some juvenile severums that were sold to me as Rotkeils (from a usually reputable source) and they are also showing 9 bars (or maybe 8 with one additional fading one...?) Do you count the faint one that goes through the eyes? Does the bar have to go all the way from dorsal fin to anal fin to count as a bar?

Anyways, just seeing if you had come to a resolution on this, or if you had come across any definitive research on if bars are even a reliable way to identify Heros species?
 
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