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Did you take any fish traps to leave out overnight?
-Shane

Shane wrote: 03 Aug 2022, 21:21Did you take any fish traps to leave out overnight?
-Shane

No. Sadly, we didn't have any. I'll ask and see if we can get some.

Thanks for the tip.

Cheers, Eric

Update on fishing this year. My trip to ARCOF coincided with the visit of a young college student named AJ from SOKA University in Southern California, a student of Dr. Anthony Mazeroll, the head and heart of ARCOF. AJ had been a big help these weeks. Also here is a very nice German gentleman, Alexander Lenher, who won the ARCOF raffle to Iquitos. And with him came a face familiar to PlanetCatfish, @KarstenS . What a delight it's been to meet these two and fish with them. We collected a lot more fish from a more diverse set of creeks this year. The combination of people has made this a really fun trip and I'm seeing and learning a lot. Still no and no large male , but I've got a few more days.

A photo dump of some of the fish we've caught so far. First, fish from a stream of the Nanay. @Acanthicus helped with some IDs.

, , ?, , a cetopsid (maybe ?) and ?

From a stagnant swampy creek of the Itaya: ?, ? (The position of the eye and lighter color says "not " to me, but I would have hoped to see some forking of the tail), , ? and another small heptapterid (?)

Hi Eric,
Looks like you are having a good time!
First batch of photos - picture number three - small doradid. Looks like a Physopyxis species to me.
This is an edit...I goofed ("adult"): the 5 mm size that you provided is even smallish for the genus Physopyxis.
Lee

Thanks Lee! . That would be wickedly awesome! I hope you're right. I have only 4, but I know where to find more.

Went out fishing again yesterday in the creek where we caught last year. We finally caught one!

We also found and collected a large egg mass of the common here, and we're hatching the eggs at the Amazon Research Center for Ornamental Fishes. We also caught five more , two about 3-4" SL, and a lot of . Also, super excited we caught a 2.5cm SL ! That confirms the genus (at least) of the tiny specimens we collected previously. Along with six more tiny specimens caught last night, I now I have about 10-12 of them. I foresee a new breeding protect!

Hi Eric,
Congrats on your flock of Physopyxis! They are a neat and interesting doradid. I had maintained a group of them that I collected in the Rio Negro in Brazil a number of years ago. But no breeding.

When you get home you might want to dig into the taxonomic weeds a bit in that in addition to P. lyra, another species, P. ananas is also found in the same area.

Continued good collecting!
Lee

lfinley58 wrote: 10 Aug 2022, 16:56 ...in addition to P. lyra, another species, P. ananas is also found in the same area.

Yes, I saw that on SpeciesLink.net. My largest fish appears to have only one row of lateral spines, and its coracoids flare outward, so that's why I suspect P. lyra. The little specimens, I'm hoping, are the same, but here they are too small to examine. I'll check more closely back in the USA when I have access to a magnifying scope.

Cheers, Eric

I'm leaving Iquitos and ARCOF soon. I may get one or two more chances to fish the Itaya and Nanay, but this year, in spite of all the new things we found, there are several we didn't find this year, which were around last year:

• Almost no Ancistrus sp. green spot.
• No
  Tatia gyrina
• No
  Panaqolus changae
• No
  Hemiodontichthys acipenserinus
• and sadly, @yellowcat, no
  Batrochoglanis villosus
  .

Cheers,
Eric

Interesting stuff! Have a great trip!

Can I get a confirm on ID for this hypoptopomatine? I believe they are . We caught a lot of these along the Nanay. The color on the caudal peduncle and two tail lobes seem helpful. There's a very rudimentary adipose fin.

Thanks, Eric

Yes, agree with this ID (or at least I never got to species with this one). Also spotted in Iquitos fish exporters back when I was there.

Cheers,

Jools

Hi Jools, are you responding to my post in CLOG data issues? Are you agreeing that cf_guianense is psilogaster?

Cheers, Eric

bekateen wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 14:51 Hi Jools, are you responding to my post in CLOG data issues? Are you agreeing that cf_guianense is psilogaster?

Cheers, Eric

I didn't see that, so I will go look.

Cheers,

Jools

August came late, but Christmas came early... Finally, after three months, most of the species I collected or bought in Iquitos in August landed in California. Of course, wild caught fish are prone to mortality, so I'm told that the local students and managers at ARCOF worked to replace some of the fish that died between my stay and shipping. I can't thank them enough.

What I just got home with are:

• 19
  Panaqolus albomaculatus
  (purchased)
• 12-14
  Hemiodontichthys acipenserinus
  (purchased)
• About a dozen
  Physopyxis lyra
• 3
  Microglanis aff_poecilus
  from the Rio Nanay
• 6
  Microglanis aff_poecilus
  from the Rio Blanco
• 4
  Amblydoras nauticus
  (one might be a different species)
• 6
  Rineloricaria lanceolata
• 3
  Batrochoglanis villosus
  , one BIG! (7‐9" TL)
• 6
  Ancistrus sp. Rio Nanay
  (one male 14cm SL and over 18cm TL... huge!)
• 2
  Tatia gyrina
• Over a dozen hoplos
  • About 10
    Dianema longibarbis
  • 2-3
    Megalechis thoracata
  • 4
    Lepthoplosternum
    sp. or
    Callichthys callichthys
    • If Lepthoplosternum, based on catch location (Rio Nanay), I would have expected
      Lepthoplosternum altamazonicum
      or
      Lepthoplosternum beni
      or
      Lepthoplosternum ucamara
      , but the key (HERE) for the species does not immediately get me there. The body seems too slender vertically, and the abdomen completely lacks spots. Nope... they are Callichthys callichthys.

Sadly, what didn't make it home was:

• A dozen
  Trachelyopterus galeatus
• A dozen
  Tatia intermedia
• A dozen
  Rineloricaria morrowi
  

Can you tell if the two doradids shown in photos are different or same species???

Cheers, Eric

The pattern is different, but to me, they look very similar morphologically just from the pics posted. That's a decent-sized Batrochoglanis!

Jools

The lanceolata are finally starting to macho up!

They look great!
-Shane

Thanks Shane! Yes I'm quite happy with them and they're doing well. I wish though that I had received the Rineloricaria morrowi in the shipment. Those are much less commonly imported than lanceolata.

Cheers, Eric

bekateen wrote: 19 Jan 2023, 23:37 The lanceolata are finally starting to macho up!

These R. lanceolata have now spawned: Rio Itaya black Rineloricaria lanceolata spawned

bekateen wrote: 27 Nov 2022, 08:36What I just got home with are:

• 6
  Ancistrus sp. Rio Nanay
  (one male 14cm SL and over 18cm TL... huge!)

Cheers, Eric

After reading a Facebook post by Junior Chuctaya and a reply from Emanuel Neuhaus, I learned that this Peruvian Ancistrus is part of a study and as of now it's being investigated as . Note: I realize that this FaceBook post may not be visible, so I've screencaptured it and attached it here:

These Peruvian fish are far-flung from the type locality of sensu stricto, and the SL of the Peruvian fish is at least 4 cm longer than the max SL recorded for the Guyana populations. Molecular data is going to be important to unite or split the Peru and Guyana populations.

• As a side comment on SL, there was a 2019 Zootaxa review of this species by De Souza et al. which has a photo of
  Ancistrus leucostictus
  AUM 48162. The photo's caption reads "185.3 mm SL" for the specimen shown. But if you use the 1 cm scale bar of the photo to estimate the same specimen's SL, you obtain about 85 mm SL; and in the species text narrative (page 24, inside the "Specimens examined" paragraph), this same museum sample contains no specimen larger than 87.8 mm SL. I think it's pretty clear that the "185.3 mm SL" is a typographical error. So when I say Peruvian fish are 4 cm larger than the described populations, I'm going off the SL of my big male at about 140 mm SL as shown in my photo here.

I've had some of these for 16 months now and I'm kinda surprised they haven't yet bred. Patience....

Cheers, Eric

bekateen wrote: 22 Jul 2021, 23:57

bekateen wrote: 19 Jul 2021, 02:55 We returned to the same spot off the Nanay this afternoon. Hugely successful... but you'll have to wait till at least tomorrow for pictures. Among today's catch:

• one big
  Limatulichthys griseus
  (also about 8-10 cm SL) and 2 or 3 smaller individuals.

Wow, did I underestimate this! 15.06 cm SL!

Eric when you go on your collecting trips do you ever take note of plants and trees growing in and around collection points most folks just check water parameters.

Jeanne

Hi Jeanne,

I have a few photos of the area, but I don't take close-up photos or document identities of the plants along the shorelines. In the streams where I collected, there are essentially no submerged plants. The stream beds are fine sand, leaf litter and submerged logs and branches. The shorelines are either bare mud because of human activity, or they are overgrown with long terrestrial grasses dangling into the water or in some cases there are floating mats of plants (I guess technically those are aquatic plants).

In the streams I've sampled, pH is between 4-6 and TDS is often down around 15-30ppm.

Cheers, Eric

bekateen wrote: 14 Apr 2023, 17:45
After reading a Facebook post by Junior Chuctaya and a reply from Emanuel Neuhaus, I learned that this Peruvian Ancistrus is part of a study and as of now it's being investigated as

Ancistrus cf_leucostictus

.

These Peruvian fish are far-flung from the type locality of

Ancistrus leucostictus

sensu stricto, and the SL of the Peruvian fish is at least 4 cm longer than the max SL recorded for the Guyana populations. Molecular data is going to be important to unite or split the Peru and Guyana populations.

I've had some of these for 16 months now and I'm kinda surprised they haven't yet bred. Patience....

Cheers, Eric

These Ancistrus are now spawned. Details will be posted here: https://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=51736

Trip #3: I'm back in lquitos at the Amazon Research Center for Ornamental Fishes to work, this time for four weeks. My first catch: I think it's another , just bigger than the four adults I have from my last trip. In the river, when we first caught it,
my quick view made me think initially that it might be a different species or even genus because of its larger size. We were at or near the type locality of , so I was hopeful for that, but this photo seems to say, "not that."

Seen at Stingray Aquarium today, being sold as , although that's not correct since these fish have a dark spot behind the base of the dorsal fin spine.

Direct link: Ancistrus spp... being sold as Ancistrus temminckii

Cheers, Eric

Today we fished the main channel of the Rio Itaya. Caught Hypoptopoma, lots of Pims, one small shovelnose, two striped raphaels, some mouse cats, and one novel . This specimen is unlike the green- spotted Ancistrus we caught before (HERE) and the more common- looking from the area. I've never seen this species around Iquitos before. Reminds me of a punctatus-like .

Ancistrus sp. from the Rio Itaya southwest of Iquitos, Peru

Cheers, Eric

Caught a few of these in the Rio Itaya main channel. Can't figure out the ID. Locals call these "hauxwelli," but these aren't . That said, we also caught some Loricariichthys, which might be .

Two fish are shown. The first one is much larger than the second.

Larger fish: Smaller fish: These fish are nothing like the Rineloricaria we caught either in 2022 [HERE] or 2021 [HERE] and [HERE], although they were all collected near each other. In my opinion, these are probably the least interesting (in regard to pigmentation) of the Rineloricaria species here.

Cheers,
Eric

The top one looks a lot like which I collected around the Iquitos area IIRC. The contrast oon my pic is high and that fish is also settled and not on a white backgrond.

Jools