Loaches Online Community Edition

[Martin Thoene]

Excellent! The bamboo is more directly applicable to Clown Loaches of course, but I just thought that article needed some break between the last photo caption and the closing thanks.

I'm not sure that this particular Bamboo pic works because of the leaves. It works visually in the vertical, but I think a plain bamboo cane is better for horizontals.

If we do go eventually plump for a skin along the lines of that concept I did, and you can incorporate the Bamboo idea, I think using a cane as horizontal page breaks might be quite cool.

EDIT: (so I did) The bamboo now has no leaves, much more definition, and I closed in the field, so you can squeeze it in nicely as a page break. I extended it out so now if you insert it at Original Size (inline) it sits fairly and squarely in the page, almost full-width.
I think it looks way better without the leaves.

P.S. EDIT: If that's cool, is it a problem to insert under heading lines in say the ClownLoach Markings article? 'Cos it would look cooooool

Martin.

[Martin Thoene]

Been busy today (you'll see in the Community site in green. I've added some profiles....mainly Leptobotia and Parabotia. Been into the old Index and pulled out photos on those species, re-edited them and uploaded them into the new Index Image files. There were a bunch of unidentified Leptobotia contaminants from Ken, so I just created a catch-all "unknown" profile for them.

I gave up building profiles here and just did them in the Community site. I have come back here and annotated the list on this forum though, so's it remains correct. I think it's important as a reference for Jeff because it gives something of a cross-reference between the two Indexes. I'm sure he'll want to check for good stuff that might get lost in the old Index profiles.

I deleted some discrepancies in the Index list too. There were a couple of duplications and a "Sinibotia reversa" which does not appear here at all. I'm figuring that was someone's typo of Syncrossus reversa which does exist as a profile already.

Few things for discussion:

We have an entry Homaloptera species (old profile contains multiple species). I looked and there's a crap picture of H. tweediei which isn't worth saving. Can you look at Mia Woodman's pics please. I don't think that's H. yunnanensis, H. stephensoni or H. smithi.

http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/lizard_loach.html

It's closest to yunnanensis, but the side markings are wrong and it lacks the strong fin markings of stephensoni(which I did the profile for today).
I've left the entry in the new Species Index because it can easily be converted to read "Homaloptera species unknown01" if we feel these pics are another species and we want to keep them.

What do we think to Paramisgurnis dabryanus? We only have one pic of a preserved specimen that looks like a sausage that's well past its use-by date I reckon we could just lose it because there's no way this fish is in the aquarium trade and looking at other pics on the net, I doubt if any of us would think it was anything other than a Dojo if we saw one.

I note that myself and every other Hillstream nut has been neatly ignoring the trauma that is attempting to do a profile on Pseudogastromyzon myersi. Graeme, Emma.....wasn't there a thread on petfrd about this? Someone posted a drawing comparing it with cheni? I recall that in every way my fish, Jim's fish, Les's fish fit the cheni mould, so I highly doubt that we've actually seen a REAL photo of the species.

Who wants to do a profile for the Rosy Loach? I'm totally not qualified as I've only seen photos.

Oh....the other somewhat "grey" ("gray") area........Sinibotia longiventralis What's the opinions on the photos we have? They're pretty good pics, but are they that species?

Martin.

[Jim Powers]

You certainly have been busy. Nice work!!
My thought on Paramisgurnis is to ditch it. You know I don't particularly care for pickled fish anyway.
As for Mia's pics...hmmm. I had always thought that those were H. yunanensis, but after looking at them again, I'm not so sure. The quality of the pics may have something to do with that. Also, it seems that the markings on yunanensis tend to change as the fish matures. The larger they get the closer together the markings become, more like the fish in the species index pics. So, if these are small fish, there is the possibility that they may be young of the species.
I agree, we may not have see an actual pics of myersi. The ones on petfrd could easily be cheni. We probably need to go check out that petfrd thread on the subject to see what info we can glean. With the use(incorrect or not) of the name myersi in many books and even the name tags in fish stores, it would be nice to have a profile on this fish.

[Jim Powers]

Here is the thread for those interested.
http://www.petfrd.com/forum/showthread. ... zon+myersi

[Martin Thoene]

Well.....I've gone back and read and read that thread. Compared pictures to many of my photos. I can read the descriptions there and depending which part I read and how I interpret them, my fish could be either species.

This female clearly has scales around the anus, which would make it a myersi. Distance from ventral fin origin to anus equals that to the pelvic fins.....which would make it a cheni.



The drawings do not confirm the descriptions. Particularly fin origin to anus distance do not follow the text. The top picture looks way more like my fish than the bottom one, so would make them cheni.


Ma brain she issa hurtin'!

Martin.

[Jim Powers]

Well at least you can positively id the anus. Its hard to see them on my fish unless they are in use if you know what I mean. The best I can determine using the distance between the fin origins and snout width and so forth, mine are chenis. Mine also have a white area running down to what I think is the anus that appears to be scaleless ,which goes along with them being chenis. This could turn out to be very interesting.

[Martin Thoene]

In hwchoy's picture, he's looking at the wrong thing (I think) when looking for a scaleless area around the anus. I think he thinks it's this dark spot....



....when in actual fact it's hidden under the pelvic fin tips.....and obviously surrounded by scales

Should we go back on petfrd.com and resurrect the thread? Shake the trees a bit

Martin.

[Jim Powers]

I think you're right about hwchoy.
I've gotten another look at my male but its hard to tell for sure if there are scales. The area is white but in some light it looks like there might be scales afterall. I guess I need a magnifying glass.
Yes, I do think that we might want to get that petfrd thread going again. It might help that pain in your brain.

[Martin Thoene]

Aaaaargggh! More anomolies.

Hemimyzon sinensis was renamed Jinshaia sinensis:

http://community.loaches.com/species-in ... a-sinensis

BUT, in Mr Tree's site, this is Jinshaia sinensis:



Now in Fishbase, a synonym of Jinshaia sinensis is Balitora something, which would fit the pictured fish.

Ain't this fun?

I have reactivated the petfrd.com thread on cheni/myersi. It is already bearing fruit

Martin.

[shari2]

Link please?

[Martin Thoene]

Guess you meant the petfrd link?

It's up to 5 pages now and I just threw them a BIG curved ball

http://www.petfrd.com/forum/showthread. ... 537&page=1

Martin.

[shari2]

Thanks. got it off the OT.

Withdrawal symptoms were pretty bad, eh?

[Martin Thoene]

Been busy again today. I've moved over what I consider to be all the good photos out of the Botiine loach profiles. Basically all that remains to go are the few videos that are linked from within profiles.

I looked through some of the coppermine galleries. Somewhere there's a picture of Clown Loach fry, but can anybody remember where?

I looked in the folder that is just general uploads and found some great stuff from Heok Hee Ng which I've uploaded. Cool habitat shots on a few species, plus some fish pics.

I've uploaded a load of large Clown photos. They might be particularly useful for NCIAC.

Created a catchment "article" for stuff on Clown Breeding related items....that's what I wanted the Clown fry pic for.

Martin.

[Graeme Robson]

The clown loach fry where sent to me from Heok Hee Ng. He has allowed usage of the pictures. If you want large images of them, then just give me a shout.

[shari2]

Does this mean we can use them? (as in permission is granted? )