Loaches Online Forum

This is a bit of a strange one, and I have titled the post with the name that is being used in the trade right now. Strange because B. kubotai is native to Myanmar, and these Indian B. rostrata-like loaches are being compared to them. The supplier claims they are a new species, and I am waiting to find out further details on collection location. They are definitely not man-made hybrids, these are wild caught.

I have uploaded rather a lot of photographs to try and show the variation among the specimens I received last week. These fish are not larger than 2" TL. At first glance when acclimatising them I thought they were the usual B. rostrata, but the next day when I took a closer look, I saw differences. This supplier also has standard B. rostrata and standard B. kubotai in stock at the moment, and he is one of the best out there. His stock list is extensive (with so many rare species) and he has no reason to supply B. rostrata under two separate names if they weren't slightly different/from different locations. Whether or not they are a brand new species as claimed, is another matter!

To the eye they looked to have a silvery base colour, but in the pics you will see golden colours at certain angles. I'll number the pics so that if anyone wants to talk about a certain specimen, it'll be easy to refer back. The loaches stirred up quite a bit of debris in the photo tank, and apologies for not having been able to find time to clean the pics up.

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Emma

By the heck that is a lot of photos Emma,

If I saw these in a shop I would be more than happy to ID them as B.rostrata.. They may well be from a different collection source than others in the past and a few seem to have more than a normal variation in patterning.
Some like the one in pic 36 seem to have a more B.kubotai like patterning and others are more normal..

The ones with the dotted pattern remind me of the fish that Mick or Mark (I think it was one of them anyway) posted the other week which when I saw the pic was certain was a Kubotai...

Your a bit tight on the photo's Emma you could have squeezed a couple more in

They do look nice fish and I think there may be similarities to these:


The front one developed to look like this:


The back fish developed to look like this:


And now looks like this:

I tried to put a warning about the amount of pics in the title, but it wouldn't fit! Well done to those who make it through.

Mad Duff wrote:

If I saw any fish like this in a LFS I would say they were Botia kubotai..

Can of worms officially open.

Emma Turner wrote:Can of worms officially open.

Most definately

I may well have to reserve some of those Emma for a trip down in the new year

No probs, they won't be going on sale just yet anyway (will deworm them etc first). Just say the word, and I will reserve however many you would like.

to my untrained eye, i would say it's just a location difference of rostrata that Emma has,
i'm sure that these exporters have collectors from loads of areas catching most of the time the loaches we all see in our shops.
an example was when Niel got his shipment of young almorhae in there was not two alike in the same tank, he must have had at least 300 almorhae imported, no ones going to tell me they were all caught in the same location.

mick

I can see why they named them the way they did, theirs a right old mixture in that batch. Some B rostrata,B kubotai, B sp aff rostrata lookers.

Great pictures of a very interesting Loach!

Same loach. SAME LOACH! o.O

The photos show the gold more than the eye does, hence why I was saying they were rostrata in my thread. I have one that looks really kubotai-like and most that don't have any lateral spiking of the stripes. Crazy active, climbing the sides of the tank and trying to hurl themselves out.

Am now hanging on your every post for more information on where they are from.

a can of worms no doubt.

but wonderfull pictures. these pictures will be archived i hope, so we can still use them when these fish get more mature.

i am wondering if i can fit some in my tank. i love my rostrata.

they look more rostrata than kub at the moment, i wonder why the kub label?

Hi Emma

Whereabouts in India are they supposed to be from?

I very much doubt they will be B. kubotai but probably one of the rostrata complex. Please refer to my article on Botias for a long discussion on the fact that there are at least 3 'forms' of rostrata and we dont yet actually know for definite which is the proper one; or if they are all rostrata and just variable populations. If they are distinct then the rostrata in the hobby is probably not the true rostrata anyway.

The adults of one of the rostrata complex (the one from southern Meghalaya and northern Bangladesh) is similar to adult kubotai in pattern. That may be why they are being sold as Indian kubotai. If they are that 'species' then they will be very nice when adult (see pictures by Andrew Rao in my article).

It may be an idea to now post the pdf of my article on LOL if you are interested? You could then link it to the gallery pages of the relevant 'species'.

That would be great if we could host the article on LOL. I am still waiting on collection location. My supplier's wife had a baby this week, so he is not around to answer Q's at the moment. As soon as I have info, I will post it here.

TDO, I have a copy of your pdf on file, is it ok to upload it to the site? I take it you would like to be credited with your human pseudonym?

Emma

Yes TDO, please post the pdf. We are interested.