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Saw a picture of this from a Peru exporter, Stingray Aquarium's advertising brochure about a month ago during Aquarama 2005.



Managed to get 4 specimens from Taiwan last week. Here's one of them with a Parotocinclus maculicauda behind it. Any idea what they might be? A Nannoptopoma or Hypoptopoma? Has it been described or at least some information on it, i.e. mentioned somewhere?

HI!

Really must be an Nannoptopoma sp... regarding the species, no idea....likely undescribed...

just one strange thing, is that Parotocinclus maculicauda was imported along, because these occure in southern Brasil and your Nannoptopoma sp is coming from Peru....

Cheers
Yann

Would it be possible to get a close-up picture of the lateral line pores, and of the plates on the belly?

I'm thinking this might be an (undescribed) Otocinclus.

no no no... they were seperately imported. The Nannoptopoma were imported about a month back whilst P. maculicauda came in only 2 weeks back. From two different suppliers in Taiwan. I happen to quarantine them together in the same tank. Sorry for the confusion.

Mike_Noren wrote:Would it be possible to get a close-up picture of the lateral line pores, and of the plates on the belly?

I'm thinking this might be an (undescribed) Otocinclus.

Hi Mike,
I'll see what I can do about the underbelly shots. Would need them to scale the tank glass for me to get a good shot. Kinda tough really considering that I always see them at the bottom on the tank. Any distinctive features I should be looking out for?

Well, the chief differences between Otocinclus and Nannoptopoma according to Schaeffer are:

Nannoptopoma: Head or snout greatly depressed; eyes visible from the ventral side of the fish; posterior trunk plates with odontodes restricted to posterior margins of plate; first dorsal spinelet absent; lateral line canal extending to last pre-caudal plate.

Otocinclus: head or snout not greatly depressed; eyes not clearly visible from the ventral side of the fish; posterior trunk-plates with odontodes evenly distributed; lateral line canal not extending to last pre-caudal plate; dorsal spinelet present.

N.b. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Nannoptopoma, so I do not really know "how great is great" wrt the depression of the snout. Your fish certainly has a somewhat depressed snout, but I personally have a hard time seeing it as greatly depressed.

Having kept another Peruvian Nannoptopoma sp. before, I'm inclined to think that they are a Nannoptopoma sp. rather than an Otocinclus sp.

Here's a picture of the other Nannoptopoma sp.



PS: the snout is really depressed as Schaefer had mentioned it to be.