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meeli or hequi?


tranced

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry you got no replies, I hadnt seen the post before so guess I just missed it or didnt feel qualified to answer.

I'm still not qualified, I googled and all I could find so far was an opinion that they may be the same fish with a diferent name because of location.

Most of the hits were the same question n diferent forums so may have been your posts :-)

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good thread there!!! thanks it has some great info, but as all threads on this particular issue you kind of walk away feeling more confused than when you started...

here is some pics. best i can do for now. will eventually get some better shots but these show at least why i am confused here

OK so i bought these fish as 'hequi'. when i questioned the guy intently about it he realised he wasnt really sure what they are.

a pair bond formed so i put them alone in this tank. and moved the extras elsewhere. here is the female

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and here is the male

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ok so they normally look like this, very pale, kinda fat and with the sloping forehead (reminds me of an ornatapinnis but less pronounced) when they get exited they get dark barring allover them.

OK NOW these fish i bought as 'meeli' but they were from bayfish so...

they were a pair when i bought them. they both are in another tank with the odds and ends from the first pairing you see above you. (the 'hequi') they are clearly not the same species or at least different variants. the others look exactly like the fish pictured above, but these guys look like this...

this is the female i think. normally she is HEAPS darker than this, in fact this is the lightest i have ever seen her. i think she started stressing because i put a super bright t5 on the tank to take the photos (tank normally unlit) but that in itself is wierd, the earlier fish get darker when stressed, she got lighter.

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here the male... he shows the differences more clearly, he has a constant dark barred pattern on him. it goes from dark to super dark but never anything else. he never loses these bars. his face looks more 'pointy' or at least the jaw is underslung to some degree. he also has a dark blue/grey 'facemask' his body shape is overall leaner than the other type of fish i have (above)

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another shot of the male, and in this pic you see some of the extra fish from the pairing of the very first fish i showed you above. they look similar in some ways but so very different in others. they are subtle but there for sure. the first type are paler, fatter, flatter faced and gain barring with exitement or stress. the second type are darker, leaner, pointy faced and are constantly barred, this fades a little bit when stressed.

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well hopefully this is of some interest to the tang fans out there.

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I tried shellies a while back and in the end never really knew what sort they were (still dont!). Mine had similar barring but it only showed when they were being teritorial. They could be nasty buggers too, ended up with 3 left from 7 from fighting.

Great fish very entertaining and curious once they got used to their surrounds.

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I see you've been doing a lot of research on other sites, but there still seems to be considerable confusion and a good case for a taxonomic revision of the meeli/boulengeri/hecqui group.

My "hecqui" (or are they meeli :lol2: ) chop and change from the dark blotching to a pearl colour. Mood seems to be a big factor in their colour/patterns. Here is a pic of my female I took some time ago.

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Had a look in Konings book this morning and he has meeli as a synonym for hecqui. He considers them one in the same, so maybe some of the patterning is more to do with variation within the species than features of different separate species.

Bruce

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Interesting article Dobbin but it creates more confusion for me.

I've got two relatively large shells in the tank. My pair dig around the shell (as described in the article) which the female occupies and breeds in, and the male occupies the other shell, and fits inside it! He is out most of the time, but there are ocassions where he is in it a lot. He was probably inside the shell more before I added Leleupi to the tank (6x20 - frontosa are also in there).

Bruce

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Sorry to hear about the loss, I've been lucky and only lost 1 lemon cichlid from jumping. Also lost 1 shellie when I took a shell out and forgot to check it but we wont talk about that :-(

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hecqui !!!!!

What???

No lids on your tank in winter

hate to have your power bill

How many fish surprise you how far they can jump to their death :wub

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