Loaches Online Forum

Both certainly bear strong resemblance to each other. I guess we need more obvious physical differentiations to ID them apart.

There is. Most of Poculi don't have red tails, the picture shows the reddest one I have. And seeing that it is a bit more assertive than others makes me wonder a bit...

Revised to fix a typo.

hmm... will the red tails be apparent in juvenile S. mahnerti as well?

Unfortunately both Schistura mahnerti and Schistura poculi rarely enter hobby. What are generally exported from Thailand-Myanmar border and within Myanmar are either S. vinciguerre or an undescribed species from Maeklong basin.

Presumed male S, poculi have red in the tail, but not extensive like S. vinciguerre , S. sp. Maeklong, or Schistura mahnerti . There are pics of S. poculi in Loaches species index:







Nonn's pic of ripe female poculi at Mae Hong Son province:



I had made mistake in the past and the last pic of poculi in the poculi section should be S. sp. Maeklong:



It is slenderer than S. mahnerti. This pic below is UW pic by Nonn:



Nonn's at-the-site pic:



My pic:

S. vinciguerre is mostly from the border between Thailand and Myanmar, and it is from Ataran and nearby rivers. It seems slightly slenderer that S. sp. Maeklong. Since the collecters in the border area collect fishes from both side of the border both species are collected and often mixed, making it almost impossible to separate them...

Nonn's pic of S. vinciguerre from Ataran:



Lastly: S. mahnerti. It is from Salween drainage and rarely collected since Salween is infrequently collected. Adults are pretty thick compared to similar species. Here is big mama [pic by Mr. Wildinstinct]:



Pics by me:









More here:

http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/sc ... lween.html

I had made mistake in the past and the last pic of poculi in the poculi section should be S. sp. Maeklong:

Thank you very much for the correction: that picture had me worried for a while.

One remaining Poculi problem I have is that it seems that the red (even very little of it) is present in only some specimen, perhaps less than half. Is it possible that in Poculi red tail corresponds to the males?

I do not know yet if that is the case. I had collected many S. poculi in Mekong drainage too and most I got have strong red tail, but it is no match against the red in mahnerti, vinciguerre, or sp. Maeklong. BTW some Schistura mahnerti and S. sp. Maeklong does have no or very small amount of red on the tail.

p.s. your pic of poculi doesn't look much like it.

Tony T. wrote: p.s. your pic of poculi doesn't look much like it.

Poculi is the best guess I could make; if you/anyone can offer a better match, I'd certainly love to know. The colors on my pic are shifted, the actual colors are those from your two first pictures of poculi. The body shape/fin shape originally matched your pictures too; they became very fat and lazy after a few months in the tank.

just wondering what species is it?

Mikev I think your fish in the link are probably S. sp. Maeklong or S. vinciguerre, as is Avant's fish.

Why is Avant's fish rather thin

haaa.. the pictures were taken very long time ago, when i first got them from the shop.

I tried to take some more pictures today, but they were too fast for me.

And don't worry, they are looking much more stocky!

No ill-treatment for my loaches