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Collecting the Rio Amacuzac, Mexico
Posted: 05 Jun 2005, 22:58
by Shane
Got out and did some collecting today in the Rio Amacuzac. This river is south of Cuernavaca on the road to Taxco (Guerrero State). Sadly, I found no catfishes.
Since it was Sunday, locals were doing their laundry upstream.
Talking to a local kid to learn the local common names of fishes. Don't those trees look cool!
Cichlid catch of the day. Can anyone ID it?
Livebearer catch of the day. This big female
Heterandria bimaculata is at least three and a half inches SL.
We decided she would collect downstream and I would collect upstream
Some of the day's catch. Very strange catching minnows and tetras in the same stream. Just seems wrong to me for some reason.
-Shane
Re: Collecting the Rio Amacuzac, Mexico
Posted: 05 Jun 2005, 23:08
by Silurus
c*****d catch of the day. Can anyone ID it?
I think that's a young '
Cichlasoma'
istlanum.
Re: Collecting the Rio Amacuzac, Mexico
Posted: 05 Jun 2005, 23:12
by coelacanth
Shane wrote:c*****d catch of the day. Can anyone ID it?
Any chance of a closer look at the other thing in the net with the Cichlid? I can't make it out.
Re: Collecting the Rio Amacuzac, Mexico
Posted: 05 Jun 2005, 23:23
by Silurus
Any chance of a closer look at the other thing in the net with the c*****d? I can't make it out.
Dytiscid larva
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 01:12
by Shane
Darn you are good HH! The holotype for
C. istlanum was collected at Puente de Ixtla about three miles down the road from where I collected the above fish. Found this article by Juan Miguel...
http://www.cichlidae.com/articles/a005.php
Common name helgramite. Make great fishing bait and are a popular pattern for trout flys. Believe they were also put in people's ear in one of the Star Trek movies. Ugly as sin but harmless.
-Shane
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 09:23
by coelacanth
Silurus wrote:Dytiscid larva
I'd hate to see the adult then! I've had Dytiscid larvae as "pets" since I was old enough to catch them, and ours are pretty robust beasts at around 5cm just prior to pupation (the UK vernacular is "water tiger"), but that is something in another class.
Shane wrote:Common name helgramite. Make great fishing bait and are a popular pattern for trout flys. Believe they were also put in people's ear in one of the Star Trek movies. Ugly as sin but harmless.
-Shane
I thought hellgrammites were Coryalid Dobsonfly larvae? I suppose that's exactly the problem with common names, one person's hellgrammite isn't necessarily another's. I'm sure there's a proverb there somewhere....
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 13:41
by bronzefry
Great pics, Shane! It's great to see how you go about collecting.
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 14:49
by Shane
Bronzefry,
This is what collecting looks like. If you could read my mind I am thinking, "What? All these great roots and not one stinking catfish!"
-Shane
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 14:58
by Jools
Shane wrote:If you could read my mind I am thinking, "What? All these great roots and not one stinking catfish!"
And, also, gosh, I wish Jools was here. What a laugh we could have at all these cichlids.
Actually, the livebearers look pretty cool too.
Jools
Posted: 06 Jun 2005, 17:21
by Shane
I am surprised that no one has said anything about the little convict above. They are not native to the system, but I have no idea how they got there. Irresponsible Mexican aquarists?
-Shane
PS Yes, I wishing you were here to collect with me.
Posted: 07 Jun 2005, 09:09
by coelacanth
Shane wrote:I am surprised that no one has said anything about the little convict above
Who, Jools? We don't like to mock the afflicted.
Shane wrote: They are not native to the system, but I have no idea how they got there. Irresponsible Mexican aquarists?
If I remember correctly they are just one of the reasons that islantum are thought to be one the Mesoamerican Cichlid spp. most likely to go extinct in the near future.
Posted: 07 Jun 2005, 13:35
by Shane
Now I remember why I never bring sicklids home. I had placed the two largest H. bimaculata (3 and 3.5 inches SL, one pictured above) with the the cichlid (5 inches SL) in a 15 gallon quarentine tank. Checked the tank this am and the cichlid had killed both livebearers. Now where can I find some nice Mexican Apistos?
-Shane
Posted: 07 Jun 2005, 13:36
by bronzefry
Shane,
You mentioned laundry being done upstream. Could this have something to do with it? But, I imagine there are areas where people always do their laundry in the river. Did you take a water sample? Just curious. I don't know much about anything, but the situation you are describing sounds unbalanced to my untrained ears.
Posted: 07 Jun 2005, 13:40
by Shane
I do not think I have ever collected from a 3rd World river where somebody was not doing laundry. The upside being that they usually do not have soap (as was the case at this river). Water in the river was pH 7.0 and hard. They were moved to water pH 7.6 and hard. Not a major adjustment for these type of fish. All other collected fishes in other quarentine tanks are fine and took their first feeding the am. The fins and scales of the dead livebearers were shredded. The cichlid in the tank is happy and smiling. Looks like a guilty smile to me too.
-Shane
Posted: 07 Jun 2005, 14:29
by sidguppy
any chance you bringing weird livebearers to your home?
Any Goodeids native to that river?
next to catfish and cichlids, they kind of fascinate me; not in the least because they make excellent dithers in small hardwatertanks, like the ones I use to raise my Lophiobagrus/Phyllonemus/synodontis-fry in
You try breeding that Heterandria, it's a fish well worth keeping IMO
Posted: 08 Jun 2005, 00:21
by Shane
According to Juan Miguel (link above)
Fish companions are found in several fish families, the larger being the catfish in the genera Ictalurus, represented by Ictalurus balsanus in the Balsas river and Ictalurus dugesi in the Rio Armeria. Livebearers are better represented, species of Allodontichthys, Ilyodon, Poecilia, Poeciliopsis and Xenotoca are common in the fish range (mostly in Rivers Coahuayana and Armeria) and Xenotaenia resolanae is located in Rio Ayuquila;Armeria, in Sierra de Manantlán. A minnow, Algansea aphanea, is also found in rivers Coahuayana and Armeria and the redhorse sucker Moxostoma austrinum in Rio Armeria. Goby genus Awaous, Sicydium, Dormitator, Eleotris and Gobiomorus are also present. The mullet so called "Fire land trout", Agonostomus monticola, and the tetra Axtyanax fasciatus, are also found in the whole range.
There are also many introduced species, African cichlid representatives like Tilapia rendalli and Oreochromis aureus are found in the whole range, introduced by the Mexican government as a dietary supplement for people in the region. North America is represented by Lepomis macrochirus, the bluegill, found in the Tequesquitengo lake and Herichthys cyanoguttatus in the same place and now in upper Amacuzac (Mistakenly described as a new species "Parapetenia cyanostigma" by Antonio Hernández Rolón in 1989). Also central America is represented in upper Rio Amacuzac by the recent introduction by hobbyists of Archocentrus nigrofasciatus that has bloomed, becoming a possible threat to 'Cichlasoma' istlanum populations.
I brought home 2 tetras,
A. fasciatus (all I caught), 3 unidentified minnows, one "
C."
istlanum, one convict (I did not notice he got bagged), and 3 female
Poecilia sphenops. I also caught lots of
Poecilia turneri, but left them as I already have a pair that is producing 20 fry every 2 weeks like clockwork. I plan to set up a 45 gallon Mexico tank and collected lots of local plants to use. No goodeids yet.
Did some further research on
C. istlanum and found it on a World's Top 10 list of most aggressive cichlids. That would explain my problems. Torn between getting rid of it and growing it up as a big pet. Kind of like Jool's pike cichlid he kept from Venezuela. Might be nice to keep around with all these fecund livebearers as a population control mechanism.
-Shane