The mystery fish!

[Dempsey Dude]

One of the guys I always strike up a convo with at my LFS gave me this guy for free today: said he was a by-catch with a shipment of jewel cichlids from a fish farm in South America. Nobody at the store has any idea what he is, nor do I... I was combing through the "fish atlas" at the store to try to figure it out but couldn't find any south American cichlid that looked remotely like it.




It's about 5 inches long. Silver-grey colouration with some faded spotting along the lateral line, mild blue iridescence on the gill plate, red eyes, elongated head, and large fins. Any ideas?

 

[hampalong]

It's a female Oreochromis of some kind... I would guess aureus, but it's a guess.
chromedome52 might know...

 

[Dempsey Dude]

Well that's not good, those get huge. Gonna have to return her. Thanks!

 

[hampalong]

Well that's not good, those get huge. Gonna have to return her. Thanks!

Yes, and they don't waste much time getting there...

 

[chromedome52]

Certainly an Oreochromis of some sort, distributed world wide as a food fish. BUT, Jewel Cichlids shouldn't be coming from a fish Farm in South America, either. They are also African. Perhaps he said south Florida? Both species can be found there due to the number of fish farms for both aquarium fish and food fish.

 

[Dempsey Dude]

He definitely said South America. I know jewels are African, I had had them in the past. I just assumed the guy knew what he was talking about and that a company in South America was breeding these African fish. But it makes a lot more sense if they came from Africa and a fellow African fish got into the shipment as a by-catch.