Loaches Online Forum

This different-looking Sewellia came in with our last batch of Sewellia lineolata from Vietnam. We bought it home to our River Tank about 10 days ago, along with what we believe to be a few female S. lineolata for our 6 males. I tried to show Graeme this fish when he visited last Friday, but it was being rather secretive!



As you can see, the markings are much finer than on the 'standard' S. lineolata. Here's a pic for comparison:



The 'unusual loach' is slightly bigger (longer and wider) than the rest of my Sewellias.

Is it likely to be a variation of the same species, or a totally different species, do you think? It's beautiful whatever it is.

Emma

Coooooooooool! I think you might have an undescribed one there Emma.
It doesn't fit the IDs of any species in either of the Sewellia papers that I have.

It's a beautiful fish

Martin.

That is indeed a beatiful fish, Emma.
Isn't that similar to the Sewellias Mark got several months back?
By the way, what are all you Sewellia folks feeding them? Are they eating anything other than algae?

Yes, that's what I was thinking Jim. I was hoping Mark might still have the pics for comparison. Martin, please could you forward me a copy of the Sewellia papers when you get a chance? I'd really like to have a read of those. It'd be very interesting if this was indeed an undescribed species. It would suggest that their natural ranges overlap with S. lineolata. Maybe I'll try asking the supplier if they could tell me the locality they are collecting from.

My Sewellias eat white mosquito larvae, brineshrimp, daphnia, sinking pellet foods, cucumber, and they even spent quite a bit ot time grazing on a piece of honeydew melon that I had put in the tank to try the Schistura balteata with! This is in addition to the obvious grazing on algae in the tank, and all the critters that are on the manifold intake sponges.

Emma

I just about had a good-ish look at him last Friday. He certainly looks different. Size wise also. Where is Mark? I want to see his pictures.

If you can't find Mark, find his pictures

It's the same alright......





I guess it could be a localized variant of S. lineolata, but the spacing on the horizontal body banding is much tighter, as is the reticulated patterning on the rest of the body. Think this one would be down to doing scale counts, etc.

Martin.

WTF???
(THIS IS AN EDIT) I've just discovered the wierdest glitch with being a moderator Graeme. I hit "Quote" on your message and your phrase

"Should we ask Nonn...etc?" ...came up, but without the normal quote annotation. I thought "Ooer!" and then hit the quote button in the message toolbar. That gave me quotes. So I merrily type out the message below.......

The problem is that he's in Thailand and doesn't have specific knowledge of these type of fish. The other "local" contacts are in Borneo/Sarawak, or Singapore and Sewellia are Vietnamese or Laotian fish.

Possibly stick the image on petfrd.com and see if any knowledge arises???

Martin.

.....and then when the message comes up I find that I've become you and overtyped your original message. How the heck that happens I have no idea?????? I tried to undo the deed, but it appears that I have assumed your identity temporarily

Can you try an experiment please? Try doing the same to my message below Emma's below this and see if you can become me

I have e-mailed our import company with some questions for our Vietnamese supplier. I'm hoping they will be willing to share some information on collection points and anything else that may be of help to us regarding the Vietnamese Sewellia. I will let you know when I get a reply.

Emma

That would be interesting to know. I wonder if the fish are batched after being sourced from different collection points/ I know that a lot of Balitorids are quite localized within river systems so it's possible that all these other type come from one location.

Martin.

lol no worries!

I'm going to become a little busy for the next couple of weeks. Damm Barbs!!

That odd one seems HUGE! Its quite simular in shape to some Sinogastromyzon Wui that I saw last week. Pretty spectacular looking too.

Jim Powers wrote:
By the way, what are all you Sewellia folks feeding them? Are they eating anything other than algae?

My two go absolutely nuts for cucumber - much more so than any other type of hillstream (that I know of anyway). From the second I put some in the tank they don't stop untill its gone and won't let any of the other fish anywhere near it! Even apart from that though, I have found them to be pretty enthusiastic eaters of almost anything I've tried them on - quite simular to P. Cheni in that respect.

I have some interesting stuff for all you Sewellia fans! I managed to contact my Vietnamese supplier (Saigon Aquarium) and ask some questions regarding the Sewellia lineolata that I have been importing from them. I had a very helpful reply from a chap there called Miroslav Farkac, who also sent me some lovely photographs of their natural habitat.

Firstly, he believes that the 'oddball' Sewellia that I posted a picture of at the beginning of this thread is actually a Beaufortia species, perhaps Beaufortia lejeni. I have not heard of this species, but it would seem their range overlaps with the S. lineolata. When/if my fish decides to rest on the front glass, I will try and take some photographs of it's underside so that we can compare it with the underside of S. lineolata.

Now onto the photographs! Miroslav has very kindly given me permission to post these here so that everyone on Loaches Online can see them. I think this may be the first time that we have seen pictures of where these fish come from.

First up are a series of pictures showing the natural habitat where these beautiful fish are collected from.....











Here are a couple of underwater shots of the Sewellia in their native waters:





And these show some freshly caught Sewellia:









Miroslav also wrote an article on Sewellia lineolata for the Czech magazine 'Aquarium Live.' He translated some of the interesting habitat information that was in this article into English for us:

"The fish live in China and Cambodia, but mainly in Vietnam. It is very attractive, but rather rare fish, which lives in small streams with large and deep pools covered by submerged plants. It can overcome high gradient stream (even 1m/sec) and also waterfalls. Sewellia moves between the pools and feeds by benthic inverebrates and algae. It is active during days searching in horizontal and vertical surfaces of stones for invertebrates. Resiliance is high, minimum population doubling time is less than 15 months and it is not protected. It is absolutely harmless fish, you can hold it among Discus without any danger. It is not very senzitive on transport, it is without problems. It is necessary to have roots and sand in aquariums with Sewellia, please, don’t catch it by hands – the fish can die. You can feed them by frozen fodder, by moskito larves etc.."

I did try and ask for names of the location/s (rivers, provinces etc) that they are collecting the Sewellia from, but I did not get an answer to that one. Not sure if it was lost in translation, or whether they just decided not to answer!

I hope everyone enjoys looking through this. A big thank you goes to Miroslav Farkac and all at Saigon Aquarium, Vietnam.

Emma

Wow! Fantastic, Emma. That was definitely the same fish I had - or extremely close. The shots of the little suckers in situ are amazing. I always love to see habitat shots. Great!

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing that with us, Emma.

Every time I see pictures like these I want to visit the places even more! Please thank Miroslav from all of us.