Severums keepers?

[Ryan]

It's pretty tough to find rotkeils of that quality. Your best bet is to do what you'd do with discus -- buy a small group of 4 - 6 and raise them out, then keep the nicest looking ones. Rotkeils should start showing some faint red coloring on their sides around 2 - 3", so if your LFS sevs don't display it, they might not be rotkeil. My current rotkeils are about 4" and the males are very much showing the red. Females may show less.

Why is the "other" fish such a mystery? I thought that the blood parrots were all sterile, and as a result, wouldn't the only way of keeping them in supply would be to keep crossing the two species to make more?

It's been speculated that there are several possible species that you can cross to get something similar. Here's some info from Wikipedia:

The Blood parrot cichlid (also known as parrot cichlid and bloody parrot; no binomial nomenclature) is a hybrid cichlid. The fish was first created in Taiwan in around 1986.[dead link][1] Its parentage is unknown, but the most commonly speculated pairings are midas cichlid (Amphilophus citrinellus) with the redhead cichlid (Cichlasoma synspilum), or the severum (Heros severus) with the red devil cichlid (Amphilophus labiatus).[2] Blood parrots should not be confused with other parrot cichlids or salt water Parrotfish (family: Scaridae).[3]

Because this hybrid cichlid has various anatomical deformities, controversy exists over the ethics of creating the blood parrot. One of the most obvious deformities is its mouth, which has only a narrow vertical opening. This makes blood parrots hard to feed and potentially vulnerable to starvation. Some cichlid enthusiasts have called for their removal from the market and organized boycotts against pet stores that sell them.[3]

Also, there have been reports of fertile blood parrot spawns. I'm not sure how the fry turned out or what they were, but apparently not all blood parrots are sterile. I think there was an article about it several years ago in one of the big fish magazines. It was also said years ago that gold severums (and more recently, red severums) were sterile, particularly males. That also isn't the case. A lot of people spawn gold and red severums.