Venezeula Black

[Baardman]

Hi guys silly question i cant find them on the c list or the cw list any help?

[bekateen]

Venezuela black is not

Corydoras(ln7) venezuelanus

. It's a human-made line-bred color morph of

Corydoras(ln7) schultzei

:
https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/sp ... cies_id=34.
Cheers, Eric

[Baardman]

Thanks buddy

[Shane]

Just a quick note. The picture titled "commercially bred form" is not this species. The pictured Cory, and I have seen them in several chain pet stores in the U.S. is Corydoras "llanos." Don Kinyon brought back both spp from Venezuela and spawned them. I can only assume the examples we see of both spp in the hobby either originated with Don's spawns or fish taken into Germany by Norbert Flauger. Norbert used to pack one small Cory each in glass baby food jars for transport to Germany. I do not know who he left them with, but he was in regular contact with Ingo during the years he and I lived in Venezuela (2000-02).
C. venezuelanus is restricted to the Maracay/Tuy basins in the mountains. These are clear, cooler streams with more flow, especially in the rainy season, than one would expect Corydoras to tolerate. Interestingly, they are the only callichthyid found in these basins (historically, the two basins were connected).
C. "llanos" is found in Orinoco tributaries south of the cordillera in much slower flowing, warmer creeks typically with deep leaf litter.
I recently found several DVDs of collecting footage for both spp (and many others) but given the age of the footage it looks horrible by today's standards
-Shane

[Shane]

Some great photos and observations of C. venezuelanus in the wild here.
https://www.mikolji.com/articles/the-scarecory/

-Shane

[Jools]

Great link, thanks! Here's a nearly 20 year old picture you took of me doing similar with that species.

Jools

BTW, the commercially bred form (might have been Don's fish, don't know, came from catcon) that found their way to the UK were then traded (for Myxocyprinus ) to eastern european commercial breeders. I have a suspicion (not fact) that they are bred with some form of C. aeneus (or maybe C. eques) for the trade. Anyway, I don't know what they truly are now.

[Shane]

Hard to say for sure as many Corydoras will hybridize and those Eastern European breeders probably only had a small number of C. Llanos to start with. That said, the ones I am seeing here in the U.S. look exactly like the sp I collected all over in the llanos alongside C. septentrionalis and habrosus.
C. venezuelanus is deserving of far more study as it is the only Cory in its range and one of the very few spp to exist outside the Orinoco or Amazon basin in northern South America. The huge Magdalena basin, for example, in Colombia has no Corydoras spp at all and they are absent from other large coastal drainages such as Maracaibo and the Yaracuy.
-Shane