Taxonomy & naming
The British ichthyologist Charles Tate Regan described the seven-striped cichlid in 1908, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, as Cichlosoma septemfasciatum. The genus name was a spelling slip for Cichlasoma, the vast, now-dismantled catch-all into which nearly every New World cichlid was once poured; the Catalog of Fishes flags the lapse directly ('Original genus should have been Cichlasoma'). Regan worked from fourteen syntypes taken at the 'Río Iroquois, Costa Rica,' now held at the Natural History Museum in London (BMNH 1909.3.13.82-90, with one skeleton, .91). Few small cichlids have worn as many names. Through the twentieth century the fish was treated as Cichlasoma septemfasciatum (Bussing 1987; Conkel 1993), then as Archocentrus septemfasciatus (Loiselle 1997; Bussing 1998), as workers tried to lift the convict-cichlid group out of 'Cichlasoma' and into Archocentrus. That arrangement did not hold. In his 2007 revision of Archocentrus (Zootaxa 1603), Juan J. Schmitter-Soto broke the assemblage apart, erecting the new genera Cryptoheros and Amatitlania and dividing the species between them; he placed this one in Cryptoheros, the small cave-spawning group, where it stood as Cryptoheros septemfasciatus for the better part of a decade (also Allgayer 2001; Angulo et al. 2013). The current placement comes from Říčan, Piálek, Dragová and Novák's combined molecular and morphological revision of the Middle American cichlids (Vertebrate Zoology 66, 2016), which recovered the species within Amatitlania — the genus of the convict cichlid, Amatitlania nigrofasciata — rather than with the true Cryptoheros. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (updated 10 June 2026, species record spid 37129) accordingly lists it as 'Valid as Amatitlania septemfasciata (Regan 1908),' following Říčan et al. and Angulo's later Costa Rican treatments (2021, 2023). The genus name honours the type locality of its type species: 'Amatitlán,' from the Nahuatl for 'a place abundant in amate,' the bark paper made from wild fig trees. The Cryptoheros placement is best read as a real but superseded step, and the species still appears under that name across much of the older aquarium and reference literature.
Morphology
Amatitlania septemfasciata is a small, deep-bodied, laterally compressed cichlid in the convict mould, reaching about 4 in in standard length (FishBase) — a true dwarf among Central American cichlids, with females smaller still. Its defining feature is the one the name records: a series of dark vertical bars crossing the flanks (Latin septem, 'seven,' plus fasciatus, 'banded'). The ground colour is a pale silvery to greyish-tan, often washed with soft gold or pink and carrying a bluish iridescence on the lower body and cheeks, against which the bars read as the chief marking. Their number and contrast shift with mood and sharpen markedly during display and spawning, when breeding fish take on a darker, higher-contrast dress and the unpaired fins run from translucent to faintly spotted. Sexual dimorphism follows the familiar small-cichlid pattern: males grow larger, with somewhat extended, pointed dorsal- and anal-fin tips and, in older fish, a slightly heavier head; ripe females are rounder-bodied and often flush orange or coppery on the belly and flanks in spawning condition — the same broad strategy seen in the convict cichlid. Outside of breeding, the sexes are not always easy to tell apart at a glance.
Habitat
This is a fish of the Caribbean (Atlantic) slope of lower Central America. FishBase gives its range as the Atlantic slope of Costa Rica, from the San Juan River drainage in the north to the Río Banano near Puerto Limón in the south, while the Catalog of Fishes extends it to the 'Atlantic slope of Costa Rica to Nicaragua.' Overwhelmingly, though, it is a Costa Rican Caribbean-lowland endemic, with the bulk of its range inside the San Juan freshwater ecoregion (FEOW 205). It is a stream and rivulet fish, recorded from waters 'of all velocities, slow to fast moving' and found up to about 1,800 feet (roughly 1804 ft) of elevation — from coastal lowland rivers up into the foothill streams of the Caribbean versant. It favours the clear, warm, well-oxygenated rainforest waters typical of the slope, over bottoms strewn with rock and leaf litter that supply both food and the crevices it breeds in. FishBase characterises it as benthopelagic and tropical, in a temperature window of about 70–81 °F, a pH from 7.0 upward, and water of low to moderate hardness (to about 15 dH).
Feeding
Amatitlania septemfasciata is a small omnivore that works the stream bed. FishBase records a diet of algae, leaves, fruits, aquatic insects and bottom detritus, and places it low on the food web at a trophic level of about 2.2 — nearer the herbivore-detritivore end of the cichlid range than the predatory one. In practice it grazes and picks: it takes algal growth (aufwuchs) and the small invertebrates living in it off rocks and submerged surfaces, scavenges fallen plant matter and detritus, and snaps up insect larvae and other small invertebrates from the substrate. This mixed, plant-leaning diet is typical of the small Amatitlania and helps explain why the convict-group cichlids adapt so readily to varied foods in captivity. In its home streams it is a generalist gleaner of the rocky, leaf-littered bottom rather than a hunter of other fishes.
Mating
Like its convict relatives, the seven-striped cichlid is a monogamous, biparental, pair-bonding cave-spawner. A male and female pair off within a loose population and together set up and defend a territory centred on a breeding site — a crevice between rocks, a gap beneath a stone, or a similar sheltered cavity on the river bottom. Courtship runs through the usual small-cichlid repertoire of lateral displays, fin-spreading, quivering and joint cleaning of the chosen surface, with the female's heightened colour signalling her readiness. As in the convict cichlid, the pair bond and the shared defence of the nest are the heart of the system: both partners hold the territory, and aggression sharpens around the spawning site, though in a fish this small the defended area stays modest. The pair make devoted parents, but they can be hard on each other and on tankmates once breeding begins.
Breeding
Amatitlania septemfasciata is a cave-spawning, biparental substrate breeder. FishBase reports that it 'spawns in caves and crevices of rocks on river bottoms and produces 200-250 offspring per spawning.' The adhesive eggs are laid on the roof or wall of the chosen cavity and guarded closely by both parents in the standard convict-group division of labour: the female concentrates on fanning and tending the clutch inside the cave, the male patrols and defends the perimeter. Once the eggs hatch, the wrigglers are moved within or just outside the cave, and the free-swimming fry are then herded and guarded as a tight school by both parents, who go on shepherding them for some time. By cichlid standards this is a productive, reliable breeder — broods run to a couple of hundred fry, and FishBase rates its resilience as high, with a minimum population doubling time of under fifteen months. In the tank it breeds much as the convict cichlid does: readily, in a cave or dark recess, with both parents in vigorous attendance — which is why the convict-group cichlids have long served as a standard introduction to cichlid breeding.
In the aquarium
Traded under its current name and, very commonly, under the older labels Cryptoheros septemfasciatus and Archocentrus septemfasciatus, this is one of the smaller and less belligerent members of the convict group — a sensible pick for anyone who wants a hardy, easy-breeding Central American cichlid without the bulk and bad temper of the larger species.
Tank: a pair does well in a tank of moderate size, on the order of 35.5–47 in long, which is generous for a fish of about 4 in and gives a breeding pair room to hold a territory. Aquascape it as a rainforest stream — plenty of rockwork arranged into caves and crevices (retreats and spawning sites both), a sand or fine-gravel bed, driftwood and leaf litter, and good water movement with strong aeration to match its oxygen-rich home water. Robust or plastic plants work, but a digging, territorial cichlid will rearrange the tank to taste.
Water: track the home range — around 72–81 °F, pH from neutral to moderately alkaline (about 7.0-8.0), and low-to-moderate hardness, with the regular water changes and solid filtration any cichlid benefits from.
Food: undemanding. A varied diet of good-quality flake and sinking pellets, with frozen and live foods (bloodworm, brine shrimp, daphnia) and a vegetable component (spirulina-based foods, blanched greens), matches its omnivorous, plant-leaning natural diet.
Tankmates: choose robust fish of similar size that can hold their own — other medium Central Americans, larger tetras and armoured catfish all work — but expect the pair to clear a spawning territory and drive off neighbours once they breed; very small or timid fish are a poor match. The usual convict-group cautions apply: don't house it with much larger, aggressive cichlids that will dominate it, don't crowd a breeding pair, and don't keep too many in too small a tank, where a pairing-up turns the rest into targets.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Amatitlania septemfasciata as Least Concern (assessed 7 November 2019 by A. Angulo and T. Lyons). It occupies a reasonable spread of the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica — across the San Juan drainage and south to the Río Banano — and as a habitat generalist of streams and rivulets spanning a range of current speeds and elevations, it is buffered against local disturbance rather than tied to a single vulnerable site. It carries no CITES listing and is of no real commercial-fishery interest beyond the ornamental trade, where it is a minor but established species. The background pressures on Costa Rica's Caribbean-lowland fishes are the familiar ones — agricultural and urban pollution, deforestation and land-use change in the watersheds, and the alteration of river systems — but none is documented as a population-level threat to this cichlid, and its status is read as stable.