Surprise rubberlip in pet store

[bekateen]

Hi All,

At the end of June, when I visited The Wet Spot and toured CichlidExchange, they had some very nice, uncommon rubberlips in stock which had a silver-white flecked head, blotched or saddled body and red-tinted tails. After returning to California, I asked a LFS to order me some. When I got the fish, I found this oddball in the group.

• Thin body, with a somewhat pointy face
• Huge eyes
• Silvery body with faint saddles, tiny rows of dots on the paired fins but almost no markings on the unpaired fins
• Dark indented grooves from the eyes to the mouth
• Prominent free tips to the upper lip corners, but a trivial amount of fleshy lip when viewed from above... so much so, at first I thought it wasn't a rubberlip!

I think it's most similar to

Chaetostoma sp(1)

. Sadly, I have almost no info on its source, other than Colombia and it shipped with a mix of

Chaetostoma formosae

and

Chaetostoma dorsale

.

Your thoughts?

[bekateen]

Here's the rubberlip I had ordered. These were all imported as "assorted rubberlips" and I think all from Colombia. The oddball is visible on the right of the photo.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Is the mystery fish

Harrtia

?

[Shane]

Eric,
Can you get a pic against a dark background or after they are settled?
-Shane

[bekateen]

Absolutely.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Eric,
Can you get a pic against a dark background or after they are settled?
-Shane

Here you go. It has a lot more color today compared to yesterday, but still a very silvery fish compared to the other 11 fish I received in the order.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

CateLog is still down. Once up I'll do some cross checking. I am pretty sure I have photoed this fish in the past.

My working theory is C. chimu as it is collected alongside the other sp you have.
-Shane

[bekateen]

CateLog is still down. Once up I'll do some cross checking. I am pretty sure I have photoed this fish in the past.

My working theory is C. chimu as it is collected alongside the other sp you have.
-Shane

Yes, last night when I first saw the fish,

Chaetostoma chimu

was something else I am considering. The first pic and the last pic on the CLOG page of juveniles look very similar to me fish. I'll have to wait and see.

And maybe the entry for

Chaetostoma sp(1)

is also C. chimu? The photos of juveniles look similar, but the adult shown does not. But adult C. chimu are highly variable in appearance, so who knows? I'm unfamiliar with the backstory of C. sp.(1).

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

As for the other rubberlips in the photo, the ones I was expecting to receive, I believe they were from a Peruvian shipment. Maybe

Chaetostoma microps

?

Somebody on FB suggested that ID, and I think it's correct.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

As for the other rubberlips in the photo, the ones I was expecting to receive, I believe they were from a Peruvian shipment. Maybe

Chaetostoma microps

?

Somebody on FB suggested that ID, and I think it's correct.

Cheers, Eric

Here's the best in-tank photo I've been able to get of one of the 11 Chaetostoma (not the oddball). These look just like

Chaetostoma microps

, but after speaking to the importer, they stated that these are from simply "Colombia," not Peru. I don't know how to reconcile appearance with catch information, since C. microps is known only from Ecuador and Peru. Maybe it has a wider distribution?

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

Eric,
These key out as C. dorsale which is one of the most common sp from the Colombian Orinoco piedmont . This also makes sense given your contaminant C. chimu as the two spp overlap in their range.
There have been several very good Chaetostoma papers published in the last few years. Probably need to do some updating on the site. For example, C. milesi has (finally!) been restricted to the Magdalena.
-Shane

[bekateen]

Eric,
These key out as C. dorsale which is one of the most common sp from the Colombian Orinoco piedmont .
-Shane

Hi Shane,

You may be correct, but I had excluded C. dorsale for two reasons.

• First, I've seen what I believe is C. dorsale many times before in stores, and I kept several C. dorsale a few years back (HERE). These new fish look nothing like what I've ever seen before, except for the singular trait of whitish spots on the head. Beyond that though, they differ.
  • My experience with C. dorsale is that its overall color is a deep charcoal grey, nearly black. It has the small silvery white spots on the head; those spots continue back onto the body where they grow or fuse together to form diagonal stripes on the sides of the body. In that way, they look similar to
    Chaetostoma nudirostre
    . The tail of C. dorsale, or at least of the C. dorsale I've seen, is hyaline or nearly so.

    

    My previous C. dorsale

  • By contrast, these new fish have a body color, as you can see in my photos, that varies from tan to light/medium grey; the spots stop behind the head and then there are no white marks posteriorly other than small white spots on the dorsal and paired fins. Rather, the body is covered posteriorly with a mottled color of mostly base color, with small irregular (resembling spiders) black spots scattered and with wide networking lines of dark on a light background (this pattern is similar to that which I see on the
    Ancistrus sp(8)
    and
    Ancistrus sp`Cucuta`
    ). The dorsal and paired fins are faintly marked with dark bands, and the tail is strongly marked with dark vertical bands; the tail can also have a faint orange-red tint.

    

• Second, I can provide some additional context to the at the import source (Cichlid Exchange). I toured the CE facility in late June, where I saw a tank full of these fish. Steve Lundblad told me they had recently arrived, and he said they were different from the typical shipments of C. formosae and C. dorsale. All of the fish in the shipment looked like these. As I looked in the tank, I noticed there were no contaminants among them: no C. formosae, no "typical" C. dorsale (and the single C. chima was not in the group). I'll attach a photo here of these fish at CE.
  

  

  My rubberlips as they appeared at CE in late June

  In late July, before my LFS could place an order for me to get these weird fish, a second Chaetostoma shipment arrived at CE, and this was all C. formosae, typical C. dorsale and this lone C. chima (the C. chima specimen did not come in the import shipment with my fish in June); this July shipment did not include any fish resembling the fish from the June shipment (my 11 fish here). When my LFS placed an order for rubberlips on my behalf, I contacted CE and asked that they ship only the fish that weren't C. formosae or typical C. dorsale. That's how I got these fish.

If these fish are just a variant of C. dorsale, that's fine with me. But they sure don't look like any C. dorsale I've seen. Moreover, I arrived at C. microps after using the diagnostic character traits described in the relatively recent paper by Nathan Lujan and others (HERE). But their paper, perhaps like yours?, was limited to keying out regional fish, so that's where I run into conflict.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

I am confused. The picture above (taken at CE) is something new to me, but they look different than your fish. This may not be the case as you are looking at the actual animals vice photos. I'll keep digging.
-Shane

[bekateen]

I am confused. The picture above (taken at CE) is something new to me, but they look different than your fish. This may not be the case as you are looking at the actual animals vice photos. I'll keep digging.
-Shane

Hi Shane,

If you're confused, then I'm in good company, 'cuz I'm confused too. (but that's my daily status )

To confirm this issue, they are all the same fish. Of the three photos below, my fish (top two photos, pics taken at my house) are the same fish as the fish in the bottom photo, taken by me at CE. As I mentioned above, I have 11 of these, all look the same.

[bekateen]

Crap! When it rains, it pours! Today at work I lost at least 2

L387

and 4

Baryancistrus beggini

to a some disease... IDK what. Tonight I come home to find one of my 3"

Pseudopimelodus

sp. (Which were supposed to be little

Rhyacoglanis

) looking particularly fat. As it turns to face me, I see one of my

Chaetostoma

sticking half out of its mouth!!!

Now I'll have to tear down that 75 gallon tank to find all remaining Chaetostoma and set up a separate tank for them. Dang it!

I want to use some stronger language, but I'll restrain myself.
Ugh!
Eric

[bekateen]

... I arrived at C. microps after using the diagnostic character traits described in the relatively recent paper by Nathan Lujan and others (HERE).

Cheers, Eric

By a total fluke/coincidence, Facebook showed me a 3-year-old post which I made in the Catfish of the World group, asking for ID on a photo of a Colombian import Chaetostoma, purportedly from the Rio Ariari without more info (Ariari, presumably referring to the Ariari off the Rio Guaviare, Orinoco drainage); if that drainage is at all reliable, I would think more likely a highland stream leading to the Ariari?

That post (HERE) led to a few comments, including one from Nathan Lujan stating that this fish is an

undescribed member of the

Chaetostoma microps

clade that Colombian ichthyologist Gustavo Ballen and I have in a phylogeny and are working on describing. Currently, the C. microps clade includes C. carrion, C. microps, and C. platyrhynchus.

Sadly, I can't recall even making that post and more significantly I can't figure out who sent me the photo for ID! I'm currently trying to track that info down.

I'm now more eagerly looking forward to that description so that my fish can have a name. In the meantime, I've entered them in the CLOGs as

Chaetostoma aff_microps

.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

These same-looking rubberlips have now been imported by Aquarium Glaser, which is offering them as Chaetostoma dorsale:

https://www.facebook.com/AquariumGlaser ... kxPC9vaDql