Loaches Online Forum

mickthefish wrote:ok steve will try to get a better shot of the mouth region.
btw in the papers or the discriptions does it mention the blotch on the body under the last 2 rays of the dorsal, as ive noticed they are reflective showing as a gold colour?.

cheers
mick

OK Mick. The problem I have is that although I have the original English descriptions for some of them, I dont have some others, and therefore for all of them I am relying in the main on a Chinese book that has drawings of the fish from the side and from below. I can work out the fin ray counts and scale counts but as for anything else its all in Chinese! Thats why the ID's are only tentative.

ive taken a few shots of the new fish and they're beauts.
so here they are.




cheers
mick
btw someone had snagged the gobies i wanted.

Nice catch Mick!

They look like Vanmanenia hainanensis.

hi bud
similar but i dont think the same fish as you will soon see.
they had just gone in the tank when i took them shots.
once they settle down the have a row of spots along the lateral line.

i'm going to look on mr trees pics i'm sure ive seen it there.

mick

Beautiful fish Mick.

My first thought was a Liniparhomaloptera. I'll have another squint with the books.

Again, we need to see the underside of the body and if possible a close up of the mouth from underneath. Sorry Mick!

It sure looks close to L. disparis...

The Vanmanenia hainanensis carry more spots along the flanks than the Liniparhomaloptera disparis disparis. The head shape is also different in my opinion. These Loaches have always confused me....

Lovely loaches, never the less!

my first thought was the same as steves, theres a pic of mr trees that is near identical to the fish i got today.
graeme, how many spots on the flank for the van and how many for the dispar?.

but like you said a very good looking fish nevertheless.

steve, i'll try to get a decent couple of shots in the next few days mate.

btw are you going to bradford on the 11th?. if you are could you bring a CD and i'll pay you there bud.

cheers
mick

steve here's the pics, one of them obliged by going on the front glass,
sorry for the glass being abit mucky mate.



cheers
mick

The head shape looks a bit different than L. disparis as does the flank patterns, but they may be one of the other subspecies besides disparis disparis. What size are they?
The largest L. disparis I have seen or had were just a bit over 2".
The similar Vanmanenia tend to get 3"+.
Whatever they are, they are very nice!
I want some!!

jim, the largest i picked up is 2.5 inch the rest range from1.5 to 2 inches.
there's plenty left in the shop jim. haha

cheers
mick

mickthefish wrote: btw are you going to bradford on the 11th?. if you are could you bring a CD and i'll pay you there bud.

cheers
mick

Hi Mick

I am going as I am judging so I will bring the CD. Its still hard to tell for definite as some of the things I am looking for are minute. Anyway, based on the number and placement of barbels, and the shape of the mouth etc I think it is a L. disparis disparis. However, I do see the similarities in the fish in FF of China in Coloured Illustrations for V. hainanensis (it appears that this should be now called Homalasoma hainanensis). The China book can sometimes be wrong with their IDs (as we all can) so I have taken the images from two line drawing books. The first one is of H. hainanensis from FF of Hainan. This fish appears to have too many barbels for Mick's fish:





The next two are of L. disparis disparis:





What do you all think?

Cheers

Hmmm... the mouth resembles abit like the Liniparhomaloptera disparis disparis but the long barbels on each side of the mouth resembles the Vanmanenia hainanensis.

graeme, like you i'm pretty confused about these fish, they have recognition points on both fish.
what i was wondering about is do the vans have pitted pores down the side of the snout?, as these that i got do have them and they also shown on the pics ive seen of the dispar?

anyway the fish have really settled in now mate.

mick