Loaches Online Forum

Inspired by Emma's pics of her beautiful unknown Gastromyzon species, I finally got a decent pic of one of the two unknown Gastromyzons I picked up a few months ago.
What does everyone think?
Is this Gastromyzon zebrinus ?


This is the smaller of the two fish. The caudal fin is tinted orange/red along the edges with blue in the middle. The larger one is dark grey with light grey markings and slight blue tint to the middle section of the caudal fin.

And no, that's not a threadfin. Keep guessing.

Beautiful tank and fish Jim! I have 2 new ones that are very similar. I assume they are zebrinus but lets see what the consensus is?

Nothing in da book that suggests otherwise Jim.

Perhaps a variation/location issue on the Customizing zebrinus.

Nice bold markings Jim. It certainly looks and sounds from your description as though it's G. zebrinus.

Martin.

The main thing that has put me off these being zebrinus is the boldness of the markings. Its probably a local variation or something.
Overall, they have the same build as stellatus which would strengthen the case for them being zebrinus. Both species are part of the Gastromyzon ridens group.
Basically, they look like stellatus with a different paint job.

In a side note, I didn't notice when I took it, but I now see the other zebrinus in that pic. Anyone else see it?

Bottom on the right....

(had to look long 'n' hard)

You are right Mr. Robson.
Now can you tell me what the other two fish in the pic are?
One is much more visible than the other, however, what you can see of the other fish should help in the ID.

Has it been absolutely established that zebrinus is a separate species? My LFS gets groups of "Borneo suckermouths" and they are always mixed bags of ???? I think I have identified g.occelatus, scitilus, stellatus, and zebrinus.I look and look and the different characteristics seem to blend, I'm never quite sure what is what? Could it be that these are just variations of the same species or a result of interbreeding even? I assume that most are caught in the same body of water.

Is that a threadfin Jim?

Most of the gastros seem to come in mixed shipments, but I think its been well established now that they are different species.
There was a time when scitilus and ctenocephalus where thought to be variations of the same species.
If you look at the species together you will see that scitilus and ctenocephalus share similar characteristics (body and head shape, etc) since they are part of the ctenocephalus group. Stellatus and zebrinus share similar characteristics since they are part of the ridens group. Ocellatus is the odd man out here being a part of its own group with the similar farragus.
In the wild, they don't all occur in the same streams.
Ocellatus occurs with ctenocephalus and stellatus, while zebrinus occurs in some streams with ctenocephalus.
Scitilus occurs in different watersheds but they are near locations that have ctenocephalus. It also occurs with farragus which we may be mistaking for ocellatus.
All this info comes from Dr. Tan's great book The Borneo Suckers .

And, no, that's not a threadfin.
Keep guessing.

Thanks for that Jim. I'll have to get a copy of that book.

I think I finally located the second fish, red fins to the right. ?????

Yes, you found the second fish. Now, what is it?

Danio margaritatus??

We have a winner!!!

That was fairly hard to guess as well, I could see the nose and eye of one and just make out the red finnage of the other. At first I thought Tetra due to the head profile, ruled that out and went for a Danionin species.

They are beauties, Jim. I don't suppose you've got any shots of the underside have you?

Did the store have a whole tank like these, or were they mixed in with other species? If so, were G. ctenocephalus present?

Emma