Loaches Online Forum

Apologies for the picture quality, my camera does not do good job for fish deep inside the tank, and these chaps were not coming to the front....




These were imported as Red-tail Zebra Loaches, which normally would mean S. Manherti. They are indeed similar, but not. That there is nothing red about their tails means nothing, but all the animals have a very distinct light rectangle area on top near the tail.

Any idea on what they are? A new species?

The light rectangle area is marked here:

Yeah, the red tailed ones are normally mahnerti. hard to tell from the images but perhaps Schistura vinciguerrae?

I've changed my mind. More like Schistura poculi.

Schistura poculi are certainly about at the moment. Here's a small pic sent by my supplier a couple of weeks ago for comparison:



Emma

When i first seen the picture i thought of Schistura something beginning with S.

Nice find!!

No, I don't thnk these are S.Poculi's. I have Poculi's here, they are indeed similar, but Poculi's bit smaller, and none of mine have this light rectangular area. They feel different too. No S.Manherti or S. vinciguerrae photo I could find has this area either. OK, will try for better pictures.

Emma Turner wrote:Schistura poculi are certainly about at the moment. Here's a small pic sent by my supplier a couple of weeks ago for comparison:



Emma

Hi Emma
That pic you've posted has the shiny area near the caudal peduncle like these fish of the title of this post. I'm even more convinced they are S. poculi now.

In the past i've often seen the label saying Red-tail Loach but once i've had a closer look, i have seen that there is usually 3 or 4 different species of Schistura mixed together. You may have a wild card or a Shistura poculi. I've also seen Schistura manherti without any rosy colouration on the Caudal fin. Possible juvenile females.

Looking forward to more pictures.

I know the supplier personally and he's usually pretty spot-on with his loach IDs. He knows the fishermen and the areas they've been fishing, so it's not like they've gone through wholesalers etc and ID lost/made up etc before being sent out.

Emma

Emma Turner wrote:I know the supplier personally and he's usually pretty spot-on with his loach IDs. He knows the fishermen and the areas they've been fishing, so it's not like they've gone through wholesalers etc and ID lost/made up etc before being sent out.

Emma

To make sure: I'm not questioning your fish or your supplier...I only said that the ones I saw are likely not. In fact, your picture is very similar to my Poculi's before fattening... Incidentally, some of mine have red in their tails, some don't, but none has as much red as a Manherti might have.

The other reason I thought they are not is that mine are all very uniform in size, they are just a tiny bit under the species limit per fishbase (2.1"), these were a bit larger.

The light rectangle: in the fish I saw it is as long as the tail itself, in your photo it is about 1/3 of the tail length...

I guess I'll have to go back and make better pictures... I'm even tempted to take them..but with either 8 or 9 Poculi's it makes little sense to get another 6 of a pretty similar species...

PS. The picture used by your supplier happens to be the one from the fishbase.org site,

http://www.fishbase.org/Photos/Thumbnai ... p?ID=26894

Here is the large size of the same picture:



No light rectangle as in the fish I saw at the store.

That's interesting, he normally takes his own photographs. I didn't actually order these as I have rather a lot of Schistura sp. in at the moment and can't justify getting more at present. I might ask him to take some pics of his stock for me though.

Do you happen to know where they were imported from, and if they came in 'direct'? More pictures would be great.

Emma

Mike, take a picture from above. You should see a reflective area either side of the dorsal in the underlying tissue if you use flash. It's supposed to be an S. pocculi identifier.

Martin.

Emma Turner wrote:That's interesting, he normally takes his own photographs. I didn't actually order these as I have rather a lot of Schistura sp. in at the moment and can't justify getting more at present. I might ask him to take some pics of his stock for me though.

I'm personally very fond of Poculi's but tbh they are nothing very special, just a nice inoffensive fish.

Do you happen to know where they were imported from, and if they came in 'direct'? More pictures would be great.

The store gets everything direct (probably the same suppliers as you and Frank, except they don't do a couple of interesting countries, like Vietnam and India). These were "Red-tail Zebra Loaches" from Thailand, this is the ever-present catalogue item, except the fish is different.

Yes, I'll go there, try to compare with the pic as Martin says, and make better photos...I feel hungry for a couple more Kyathits anyway. Cannot promise the fish is still alive..the store does not treat. And I'm unsure about the reflective area...a vague recollection is that it was not mentioned in the Kottelat's book, only the ray count.

Scrap "Unknown Schistura"

48 hours later the light area clearly looks like a disease, in fact it developed into a rot area on some of the animals... Almost certainly, it is simply a flex infection; I've seen similar symptoms in dither fish...first time seeing flex killing loaches.

I told them how to treat, but it is likely too late, even if they start right away. Poor fish.

As for the species: probably S.Manherti after all. Too large for S.Poculi.

The only use of this is that the next time I see a light area near the tail, I'll know what this is about.