Cichlid Fish Types
Unfortunately a lot of people will have many problems when they want to understand the specific type of cichlid that they are looking at buying. This is mainly as we are faced with a lot of possible species that offer different temperaments and appearance. Even feeding patterns can be different. Also, a bunch of fish stores are offering information that is inaccurate and because of this, it makes it tough to understand properly. Although it is true that identifying different types of cichlid fish is sometimes hard, there are some tips that will help you out.
We should think about cichlid fish categories while looking at their appearance. A scientific analysis is a bad approach and the correct one is thinking about this fish as a hobby fish. The classification and categories below will be based mostly on physical appearance and can help out a lot to identify fish species. Additional info is available and you can easily find it so that you can properly see the species you are looking at. With this in mind we can say that there are 4 main types of cichlid fish: Asian, Madagascar, African and Neotropical.
In order to see what cichlid fish you are facing you must first place it in one of these groups. Madagascar cichlids are definitely rare and it is more than likely that you may never see one in any supermarket. Most Asian cichlids are oddball fish. 3 main species exist in Sri Lanka and India in the Etroplus genus. The one that is most common is Etroplus maculates, also known as orange chromide. It is quite small at just 2 inches and can be bred easily. We should also mention the etroplus suratensis (commonly known as green chromide) and the rarest one, Etroplus canarensis.
Although we are dealing with around 1500 species there are some possible guidelines to help you to tell what you are looking at. Sometimes you do need to look on the Internet or read some books to identify some species. There are five main types of neotropical cichlids: cichlasoma-like cichlids, pike cichlids, apistogramma-like cichlids and eatheater cichlids. African cichlid variations are: Lake Malawi cichlids, West African dwarf cichlids, Lake Victoria cichlids, Lake Tanganyikan cichlids and other cichlids.
