PlanetCatfish.com

Hi Guys,

I bought this royal a while ago as an LDA63 but am now thinking that it's not, and I am hoping that someone can give me a clue of it's proper L number. He's 11.5 cm TL and eating well.













Many thanks in advance,

Nick.

Anyone????

All forms of Royal are pretty much alike - the best way to determine which form it is would be by knowing the capture location.

Without such information, the most likely conclusion is that it's a "Common" .

I'm fairly sure it's NOT the Xingu variety:
1. The eye colour is to bright red.
2. The fins are not red enough.

I think it's P. nigrolineatus "standard variety".

--
Mats

It is not P. nigrolineatus "proper" from the llanos. At that size, P. nigrolineatus from the llanos have a slate gray body with the tail tell (my pun) white "window." The longer rostrum points to one of the populations from the southern Amazonas tributaries.
-Shane

Thanks guys,

Apart from the the fact of not kowing it's exact population am I safe to say it is an L190 then?

Technically, it is NOT L190 according to what Shane writes (and he's been in Venezuela where the real L190 comes from).

There are probably many more variants of this fish than there are L-number variations, because they are wide-spread, and each major river will have a slightly different variety of the species - assuming that it's actually ONE species, which I'll leave to the scientists to decided [colouration on it's own is not a reason to say they are NOT the same species, but combine colouration with some other features, and it could make it into a different species]. A review of the species and associated variants would probably be a good thing to put on the wish-list for Ichtyology research.

--
Mats