Description
The wild-type of the species has 8–9 black vertical bars on a blue-grey body, along with a dark blotch on the operculum. Juvenile convict cichlids are monomorphic until they reach sexual maturity. The male is mostly gray with light black stripes along the body. Males are larger than females, and they have more pointed ventral, dorsal and anal fins which often extend into filaments. In addition, older males frequently develop vestigial fatty lumps on their foreheads. Unusually for fish, the female is more highly coloured. She has more intense black bands across the body, and pink to orange colouration in the ventral region and on the dorsal fin. The average standard length of mature males in the wild range from 6.3–6.6 centimeters, while breeding–sized females range from 4.2–5.5 centimeters. The maximum standard length has been reported to be 10 centimeters, with total length near 12 centimeters (4.7 in). Body weight has been reported to range from 34–36 grams (1.2–1.3 oz). Selective breeding has resulted in a leucistic strain of convict cichlids, in which the dark barring of the wild type is absent. These are also known as white convicts, pink convicts, gold convicts and A. nigrofasciata "Kongo",. The leucistic colouration is caused by a mutation in an autosomal gene and is recessively inherited.
Read more about this topic: Convict Cichlid
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)