Who Gives A Fish Forums

Got these two oddballs in a bunch of kenyi I picked up for 5 bucks. Think one's a blue convict, not so sure about the other.

Blue convict?

And then there's this mystery cow - it's ridiculously aggressive, always chasing my big male kenyi around the tank.

Thanks for the help!

They're definitely fish, that's for sure.

Yeah, no kidding, pretty sure that's what they are.

I keep seeing pics of kenyis everywhere, no convicts in sight. Kenyis are pretty straightforward - blue, yellow, or a mix of both. And then there are the albino ones, which are all pink.

First one you've got is a female, second one's a large male. Convicts are pretty distinct, you can't really mistake 'em.

I was probably off the mark, but there's another fish that's pretty similar to a kenyi. The giveaway for me that the first one isn't a kenyi is the striping - all the kenyi females I've seen have stripes that point down. This one, though, has them going both up and down. I've got 5 female kenyi right now and none of them have multi-direction stripes.

Does that make sense? You mentioned the other one is a large male kenyi, but wouldn't a male be yellow? I know females can change to yellow when they're stressed out by the males, like a camouflage thing. But would a male change to blue?

The females are generally blue, I've noticed the males tend to change colors quite frequently. It's pretty rare for a female to turn yellow, usually only happens when they're trying to assert dominance, and even then, it's not always a full-on yellow.

As for the stripes, I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at - they can definitely vary from one fish to another.

Check out this pic of a female kenyi I've got in my community tank - she's never even hinted at turning yellow.

One other fish that comes to mind, which looks pretty similar to the blue kenyi, is the blue peacock - they've got that slender body you mentioned, and as they grow, their dorsal fin will get bigger, and their coloration will change too. They'll also start showing some underlying reflective coloring.