When is an Allardi not an Allardi

I thought I would post some pics of my Allardi pair, as often Allardi juvenilles will be sold as chrysogaster. I have even had discussions with very eminent importers who disagree with me on this. I think an importers view is if its sold to them as Chrysogaster then that's what they sell it as.
Here's a couple of shots of my pair I bought in January (sold as Chrysogaster). I immediately recognised them as Allardi but the importer disagreed.



You can see the female caudal is more yellow than white and the male has alot of black in the caudal similar to a Chrysogaster. Now fast forward 5 months and look at the difference in both fishes appearance.

 

 

 
You can now see the female is more mature and the caudal has significantly more white than yellow, more in keeping with what you would normally see in adult female Allardi. The male has also changed colouration particularly along his back which has transformed from brown, through an olivey green to more of an orange. They have also developed a blueish hue to their stripes.
I am still looking for a pair of Chrysogasters and trying to get them direct from Mauritius through an importer who has a contact with a collector there. Until then I hope this pair will spawn in the next month or so. Not as valuable as gasters, but still stunning examples of Allardi in my opinion.

Important to note that very few Importers share the same appreciation for positive species identification as those in the scientific and hard core hobbyist realm.
 
As our hobby progresses this is going to be come a larger problem, one that can only be tackled through education and communication.  The average hobbyist is often times not educated enough to identify such distinctions in species, therefore to have the most impact we must try and educate the collectors and the importers. 
 
From your post I assume the importer in question is still positive that the species represented is correct, have you explained to this importer what disservice he/she is performing to many hobbyists not just you through misrepresentation of the species?

Pelagically yours,
~J      

Hey Duck, what do you say about the 2 photos on this link identified as gasters ?

http://sheric.ru/fish/atlas/373.jpg

Anderson.

We see this around our area all the time with sebae and clarkii. I'm always walking into LFS and see what are clearly clarkii being sold as sebae.

Chad Penney - MBI Council
Agis quod Adis

Yeah, bums me out as I am still on the hunt for 2 true A. Sebae.

Anderson I have this book at home!
The Gaster on the left is an adult Gaster, the one on the right is a Female Allardi. Also the first picture of the Allardi is a juvenile or male. Juvenile Gasters look very similar to juvenile Allardi with subtle colouration differences.
Here is a video of juvenile Chrysogasters.

Thanks Duck, that's what I thought !
These kinds of misidentification in books and forums just add to the problem.

Anderson.

The importer was adament at the time he was correct in his evaluation and I backed off the conversation to prevent it being an argument as I need him to help me in the future. We agreed to disagree. Basically my argument was that he couldn't possibley be getting 20 Gasters a month as they are so rare and only selling them at the price he was. His argument was the exporter always sold these as Gasters and saw no reason to change that. I explained the geographic specifics of this fish (certain areas of Mauritius) and that it would be unlikely a Kenyan exporter would have these, all to no avail. I plan to send him a picture of the female in a few more months and ask him to identify her. With a white tail from the peduncle I don't think there is much chance of mis-identification, unless of course your source of information is the book which contains the pictures above ! Hahahaha......