Earth Eaters Part 2

[johannes]

Wow bro Spakase, that Weidner book is super elusive, good of you to have it.... Make me jealous ony

[frontosa]

sfk7 - those daemons are breathtaking!!! I am drooling!!!!! can see you have given them good care.

I also want to convert my tank....anyone wants Juruparis and Red-heads???

[illumnae]

Originally Posted by Spakase

Thomas Wedner (I finally got back the book last two weeks! ):
"Satanoperca pappaterra (Heckel, 1840) is described as having six black spots along the base of the dorsal and, below these, a dark horizontal band from the gill to the caudal peduncle.... the head is generally golden yellow and has no stripes or pattern of light spots. The body exhibits no markings apart from the striking patterns of stripes and spots on a silver to yellowishish background........anal, ...lower part of the caudal, and the ventrals have a reddish tinge. "
Doesn't look like Satanoperca pappaterra based on the pics posted.

Weidner also says S. Pappaterra has a "small black spot, occupying only a few scales, on the upper edge of the caudal base".
Weidner on the Jurupari: "...There is a more or less large ocellus on the cadual peduncle."
Some of the fishes posted has an ocellus (a ring around a black spot) rather than a small black spot.

"Jurupari is the most widespread cichlid in South America, ....entire Amazon basin ...including Rio Negro, the Ucalyali drainage in Peru, the upper Rio Paraguay drainage, the Rio Guapore in Boliva, and the Orinoco drainage in Venezuela.....has been reported in the Guianas."

I imagine the variations would be humongous. Okay, Weidner has this to say of the Jurupari:

"....often possible to discern two dark brown or reddish parallel stripes running upwards from the corner of the mouth to the eye. In addition there may be two further parallel dark bars on the forehead, which appear to join the the eyes together. "

IMO all are Jurupari, possibly variations as Juruparis being so widespread. It has occurred to me also (and also mentioned by Weidner) that those conveniently labelled as Jurupari could be a totally different unnamed species.

After some tlc in my tank, this is what the last fish looks like now:



I still think it looks like S. papaterra. 6 black dots on the base of the dorsal...check (1st one is a little obscured by light reflection). Dark horizontal band from gill to caudal peduncle...check. Golden yellow face...check (more clearly seen from nick's photos than mine, but it's still the same). No other markings on a silver/yellowish background...check. Anal and lower part of caudal showing reddish tinge...check. Ventrals show red tinge in nick's photo, but not mine, probably due to lighting. Small black spot on the upper edge of the caudal base, check. And again, it looks almost identical to the S. papaterra posted in this link:

http://www.britishcichlid.org.uk/php....php?f=6&t=177

In contrast, the caudal blotch is hardly considered "more or less large" as in S. jurupari.

Of course, I'm definitely no expert and don't have books to compare, so it's a very real likelihood that I'm wrong...but based on descriptions it does look like it. The only real question is...S. papaterra does not naturally originate in the Rio Negro or Rio Orinocco, where S. daemon come from, so why were they found as contaminants in the batch of S. daemon? My suspicion is that there was a bunch of Satanopercas in the importer's facility that were a leftover from a previous shipment, and they got dumped into this batch of daemons to make up numbers. Makes sense as I don't usually see so many Satanoperca contaminants in S. daemon shipments, not even S. jurupari or S. mapiritensis, which occur naturally with S. daemon. Given the large proportion of "contaminants" in this batch, I smell human intervention.

I only wish I had a few more of these to form a small colony...just having 1 is so lonely