Help ID a loach..../Hillstream tank setup question

[mikev]

Two things noticed:

1. Species SpB I'm fairly sure is a nemacheilus. I cannot ID the exact species yet, but the characteristics are close to several of the species, and the drawing at
http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/ne ... gorae.html
is a fairly good match.
It is my sense -- please correct me if I'm wrong --- that nemacheilus are very adaptable and semi-aggressive.

2. Now, on the Beaufortia's: I've looked at the two that the store put into the their prized tropical tank demo (heavily planted 55g with a variety of small fish); they seem to be quite happy and were sitting on a very large black stone. Their color was changed to black with white dots....with eerie similarity to the picture on
http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/ga ... latus.html
Could not see their mouths, but the ability to go from white to black is fascinating (mine only went as far as dark green).

[Jim Powers]

Strictly judging from your pics (keep in mind I am not seeing the fish in "person" as you are) I really think they are crossostoma and not a nemacheilus which tend to have longer barbels than your fish. Don't judge a species from a line drawing. They can be very missleading.
Secondly, beaufortia don't change the color of their spots. They have black dots. Most Gastros tend to have light colored markings on dark backgrounds. From your discription (again, you are seeing them up close, I am not) I would guess G. ctenocephalus or scitulus or that unknown gastro we were calling G. ridens.Note that the pics in the Species Index of
G. punctalatus or actually of G. ctenocephalus. Ctenocephalus in the Sp. index are actually G. oscellatus.

[mikev]

Got you, thank you very much. Back to the drawing board.

[Martin Thoene]

Yeah...no way that any of them are Nemacheilus.

Martin.

[mikev]

All right, another possibility: I've managed to trace SpA back to the source and it had a scientific name, quite possibly wrong: H. Hoffmanni.

[mikev]

At least one ID'ing question can be closed now, I hope. The suckers shown on the pictures above are Beaufortia leveretti. If this is something you guys don't have right now, I can make more pictures for a profile. Out of my current six suckers, five are these, the last one is a Gastro, possibly punctulatus.

(leveretti came up after I got the name from the HK exporter and matched the pictures and other info.)

On SpA, the name used in HK, is Homaloptera zollingeri. I don't fully understand the nature of the confusion between Homaloptera zollingeri and disparis, perhaps you know something about it? H. Hoffmanni seems to be the HK name for SpB, not SpA.

There is one more urgent question which you may be able to answer.

I've noticed very old post by Jim,
http://www.loaches.com/hillstream_disease.html
which **may be** related to the problems with the 2nd SpA shipment. Jim, could you please say explain patchy color loss, and which Sp. your post referred to?

Here is what I saw: several of (2nd shipment) SpA at the store had large (2-3mm diam.) irregular white (colorless) areas, in most cases on top of the fish (between the head and the dorsal fin). No fish had more than one such area. I've attributed this originally to damage inflicted by other fish, but I'm not sure -- their mouths are not so large, and SpA does not seem to be very aggressive (do disparis bite each other?). While the 2nd shipment arrived in very good shape and went immediately through two levimisole treatments (I should tell sometimes how I changed the store's attitude on this), they started dying about ten days later in a big way, and those with patches seemingly dying first. (Reasons unknown, even after autopsies).

Could this be what you described back in 2002? Do you have any take on this?

(I'm not in this myself YET -- while I got into hillstreams really mostly because of SpA, getting any from the 2nd shipment while I'm still fighting the worm war did not feel safe. But I need to make some hard decisions now.)

Thank in advance for your help.

[Jim Powers]

Well, I don't really believe that Sp B was a homaloptera but often these IDs are incorrect. The whole zollingeri/disparis situation is a prime example.
But, to your question about "patchiness". What you described sounds as if it is the same symptom I experienced. It may or may not be the same thing as I'm sure different ailments could exhibit the same symptoms.
What I had was a bacterial infection that I treated with Maracyns 1 &2. You can refer to the disease treatment section for more details.
The infection was very virulent and killed several hillstreams rather quickly. I can be treated, however.

[mikev]

Jim,

Thanks a lot for the confirmation on the patches.---this tells me what to do with the new SpA fish which may arrive on Sun.

The entire hillstream experience so far has been a series of setbacks, all of different kinds....Now, a bacterial infection to anticipate....

(Your opinion -- treat proactively or wait for patches to appear? In the previous shipment, the patches appeared after a few days only, so the source could be contamination in the store. This time around, I'm tempted to intercept the fish before it comes in contact with the store system.)

I absolutely do not not claim that the HK-supplied names are correct. In the case of leveretti, the name has been confirmed by cross-checking, but I could not find a picture of H. Hoffmanni anywhere so far. As for zollingeri vs disparis, this is something I'd like to investigate further.

(I'm hoping on having more SpA around one way or another. I'm less certain about SpB -- the one survivor in my tank is showing no signs of tempering his behavior and still attacks other fish.... )

[mikev]

Appendum: in re Rasboras as a hillstream dither.

I currently have 5 blacklines in the hillstream tank, together with 6 WCMMs. They seem to have adapted to the current just fine, and in fact, I see them visiting the rapids more than WCMM's do. The combination also looks very nice since both species have similar colors/markings; it probably will look even better when WCMM's grow.

So, if the hillstream flier is revised, I'd argue for inclusion of Rasboras there -- after all, they are also about the most common fish available.

[Jim Powers]

With the problems you experienced before, I would treat the fish with the antibiotics as part of quarentine. I would also go for the ten day treatment to be sure. Also, if you could get them before the store puts them into their tank, that might be a good thing to do.
Good luck!!!
The list of dithers for hillstreams is, I suspect something that will fill out over time. There are many fish in the hobby that are from streams that are normally kept in regular aquarium conditions but would appreciate the flow.

[mikev]

With the kind of luck I've been having, I probably will manage to de-cycle the tank with antibiotics too and will end up quarantining on an ammonia absorber....(and this fish is sensitive to ammonia). Oh well, unless I develop cold feet I'll go ahead the way you say...maybe slightly lower dosage if no symptomes seen.

Good luck!!!

Thank you very much, this is exactly what is needed this time.

[Emma Turner]

At least one ID'ing question can be closed now, I hope. The suckers shown on the pictures above are Beaufortia leveretti. If this is something you guys don't have right now, I can make more pictures for a profile. Out of my current six suckers, five are these, the last one is a Gastro, possibly punctulatus.

(leveretti came up after I got the name from the HK exporter and matched the pictures and other info.)

mikev,
I thought you might be interested in this old thread on Beaufortia leveretti. I posted it last year when I thought I had got some in from Singapore. Our friend HH disagreed with the ID:
http://aquaweb.pair.com/forums/archives ... read=91735
This second thread also has a link to some of my photos of what came in:
http://aquaweb.pair.com/forums/archives ... view=91817

Emma

[mikev]

Very interesting, thank you Emma.

I'm pretty sure that your photos show the same fish as I have. (They change their color depending on where in the tank they are, mine change from nearly white to very dark green or black).

As for the Sp. id, it seems that kweichowensis have a rim on their fins, while leveretti's don't. This rim is visible on most of the images on LOL and in other places, for example, this LOL image shows it very clearly:
http://www.loaches.com/species_images/b ... sis_03.jpg
None of mine and none of yours show this rim...I think it significant.

(As I mentioned before, mine were sold as "Borneo Suckers" and came from HK. The previous shipment of "Borneo Suckers" were, however, Gastros.)

---

Do you per chance have any opinion on "SpB" shown above in the thread? Even if I'm afraid of getting more of them right now (my survivor jumps on Beufortia's a bit too often), I still would like to know what it is approximately. At least to the point of understanding if the aggression is because he is lonely, or because he is crazy.

I'll recheck on the Hainan connection and get back to you.

[mikev]

Hmm,,,, the latest shipments look quite good. No dead SpA, only one dead pseudogastro (these fellows are sensitive to ammonia), all are active, no suspicious spots (I spent an hour checking them). At least one strange stray, as usual: a pseudogastro, which is nearly identical to cheni/myersi (same colors/profile as the rest), but has no red rim on the dorsal and has a darker line along the body.

Of course, looking good means exactly nothing given the previous experience, there will be some nasty surprise yet. Probably not a worm or bacteria, which I'm ready for,...has to be something new...a virus. perhaps?

I think I'm going back tomorrow to pick up some before they got in contact with the store system by some accident.

[mikev]

Emma,

On the leveretti-Hainan connection: the poster on your old thread was correct. In fact, the Chinese name for leveretti is 海南島各水系 which, in translation, means "the rock climbing fish of the Hainan province".