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Just wondering about the newly added photos of. I have spent a lot of time googling Pseudacanthicus serratus and have never found a picture of the fish. Don`t even know if it exists. Supposedly it looks kind of like L024 and it is described from Guyana. Have these pictures somehow ended up under wrong name?

I can't help you but it seemes that Norway also has been infected with Pseudacanthicus fever!
It's a good disease!

Its expensive

Argh, the original description is in French!

Anyone who knows French can try to take a whack at it here (in the original description, P. serratus is Hypostomus serratus):
http://books.google.com/books?id=XJ8SAA ... q=&f=false

Hi you there,

I'll have a look tonight and give you translation, ok ? If someone else didn't do before me.

Fishbase says that "known only from a few specimen". Since guyana isn't a common exporter of ornamental fish, I suspect it's unlikely to turn up in any shops near us.

I have no idea as to whether the ID is correct or not. It must have been Jools that added them, as it's not in the list of last 100 updated, and the first pictures I added are there [and I was first of "other than Jools" to add a picture to the Cat-eLog] , but I suspect the ID came from Ben (amiidae), as that's who took the pictures.

--
Mats

It appears to match the description (deep brown which I interpreted as the colour of plain/dark chocolate) and with white round spots which can also been seen on the fins. Locality is unknown. I was also tempted by P. fordii.

Bear in mind with posts of this nature that we should also discuss the "if it's not this species tehn what is it" question too.

Jools

I was thinking along the lines of Pseudacanthicus sp. 4 from Peru. I believe that used to be a profile in Cat-eLog until recently.
Its a very long way from the Guyana drainage to Ucayali.

Eitofi: You shouldn't translate the whole thing, but we would be very interested in the description of color and shape, and also location and possibly method of collecting (nets, traps, hands etc.)

Haavard Stoere wrote:I was thinking along the lines of Pseudacanthicus sp. 4 from Peru. I believe that used to be a profile in Cat-eLog until recently.
Its a very long way from the Guyana drainage to Ucayali.

Unless I've missed something, I don't know this fish is from Peru.

Jools

Identification:
The pictured specimen was imported from Peru although very similar species are imported from the Rio Orinoco, Venezuela and the Rio Tocantins, Brazil.

Duh! Well, guess it should be P. sp. aff. serratus however I personally think this will turn out to be one of those species described ages ago with a wide distribution. That's just guesswork however so I will change the name when I get a minute.

Jools

Yeah! That would be a very large distribution area.
One would think they were easier to aquire. Maybe they live in deeper areas in large rivers that are not usually fished.

We found this one at an exporter in Iquitos. Ronny Thomassen bought it. It was around 13cm and allegedly came from Ucayali. My first thoughts were that they had mixed up the location, but now it seems to probably be correct.
The fish can be seen on the left of the third row from top. Only small picture:
http://www.jungle2u.com/pleckos.php

I'm pretty sure I read in Fishbase that they live deep! It may have been somewhere else.

But that's not to say they are widely disitributed, and the fish described came from Guyana.

--
Mats

I've just spent 45 minutes to translate the topic about Hypostomus serratus and when I wanted to submit it, I've been pushed out of the forum, asking for a new log in... I lost all the text !!! Jools, I'm Mad !!!

So I will write a sum up :

the article is about a specie which has been brought by Mr. Diepering to the Royal Leyde Museum. It's a description of the fish in an old school scientific French, which is quite hard to translate for me. It talks about the prickles of the armoured fish, about the colours and about the ratio size.

Serratus is about the "serrated" and indented raws of armour plates. The prickles on each crest of the armoured plates gave the specie his name.

4 raws of prickles on each side, a thick interparietal area, a convex top snout, a round outline of it. It talks about the fins too :

dorsal fin : longer than high, white and rounds spots on the first ray
caudal fin : with 2 hard rays on upper and lower lobes, which are 1/4 of the total caudal fin lenght
pectoral fins : with a "bristling" hard ray, reaching the basement of the ventral fins

Base colour : dark chocolate braun
Secondary colours : prickles on the whole armour are white, with white spots on the belly and the even fins.

the studied fish was 8 inches long.

I hope this time, I can submit it !!!

ElTofi wrote:I've just spent 45 minutes to translate the topic about Hypostomus serratus and when I wanted to submit it, I've been pushed out of the forum, asking for a new log in... I lost all the text !!! Jools, I'm Mad !!!

I can understand your frustation, but , err, well you shouldn't leave it so long! It's a good idea for a site to behave like this as imagine you had posted in a public place and forgot to log out. At least with a time out you have some chance of not having you account hacked. Best practice in this case would be to write into a text editor / word processor and then paste/post.

Jools

sorry, Jools, I had to write my frustration... even if after a while, I understood why I've been logged off... it's normal, as you said : good website practices... I still have to learn... anyway, I did a sum up of the whole thing and as it was just done, I could do it all again without too much problem...

Thank you very much Christophe

I didn`t know until now why all my elaborate posts and pms disappears. It has sometimes been frustrating, but now I know how to avoid it.

This fish was originally labelled as Pseudacanthicus sp. XX in the Cat-elog.

Here are a few details on the fish;
1) Fish was imported fm Peru.
2) This fish is abt 3-inch
3) It has a unique black color - unlike a juvenile L97 which is a little matt texture but for this fish, it is shiny just like oil paint.
4) I have seen some larger fish labelled as sp. peru but pretty much like L97, all the spots are no longer prominent.

btw, I also see that greenish fish - Pseudacanthicus sp. XX is now labelled as L63.

Wels Atlas II pictures P. serratus, taken from Bleeker (1884). The picture shows white spots on the body and fins, but no white spots on the head.

I would be very surprised if the Peru and Suriname fish turned out to be the same species. Many of these forms with such wide distributions turn out to be multiple lineages of morphologically conservative species.

I think Pseudacanthicus sp. "Peru" would be the most informative name at this stage.

I've just spent 45 minutes to translate the topic about Hypostomus serratus and when I wanted to submit it, I've been pushed out of the forum, asking for a new log in... I lost all the text !!!

Thats happened to me a few times, but just before I click submit now, I always select all (ctrl-a) and then ctrl-c to copy. This way I have a backup. For really long messages I copy to notepad, just to make sure.

racoll wrote: I think Pseudacanthicus sp. "Peru" would be the most informative name at this stage.

I agree with that. We will have to go to Guyana and find out what a P. serratus looks like, and then we can have a look at the other spotted Pseudas and see if they resemble each other.

Haavard Stoere wrote:

racoll wrote: ...We will have to go to Guyana and find out what a P. serratus looks like..

I'm in At what time is our plane ?

We just need sponsors

Did the description mention anything about habitat or location?

nothing at all about habitat or collecting in the H. serratus part. I must say I didn't read the rest of the article... I'm going through it right now... see you back in a few minutes.

Back on PC...

I checked the whole Hypostomus section of the book (google linked above), and if there are a few informations about habitats on other species, there is absolutely nothing about H. serratus...

BUT... if I check in Wels Atlas Vol II (German edition), at pages 69-70-71, I can read that the only picture ever shot of "living or at least recently dead" P. serratus was on the Maroni River (LeBail, 2000), between French Guyana and Surinam.

On page 70, you can find a drawing of P. serratus by Bleeker (1884), matching exactly the translation of the article above.

ElTofi wrote: BUT... if I check in Wels Atlas Vol II (German edition), at pages 69-70-71, I can read that the only picture ever shot of "living or at least recently dead" P. serratus was on the Maroni River (LeBail, 2000), between French Guyana and Surinam.

Ok! I should have the Wels Atlas II, but I don`t have it yet. Now it is in english as well. Is that photograph in the book? Is the fish similar to L282/L097?

ElTofi wrote:On page 70, you can find a drawing of P. serratus by Bleeker (1884), matching exactly the translation of the article above.

I don`t quite understand. Is the drawing like the pictured recently dead fish, like the description or both?

I had a quick look at google earth. As the Maroni River is the boarder river between French Guyana and Suriname it must be quite easy to actually get there. KLM flight from Amsterdam to Paramaribo and another flight to one of the several boarder cities. Lets go!!

you misunderstood me :

the drawing on page 70 was made by Bleeker in 1884. It totaly matches the description by the google linked article in this same topic.

The picture taken in 2000 by LeBail during his expedition on Maroni River (of a living or at least recently dead fish) is not in the "Lory Bible" it's just referred to. I didn't try to look for it.

Thanks again:)

Looking at this page in fishbase I found two rather exact locations. One in Guyana near Georgetown and one at the boarder between Suriname and French Guyana:
http://www.fishbase.gr/museum/Occurrenc ... s=serratus

Here are the locations on google earth: Now we need sponsors an promotional T-shirts

it happens that I personnaly know Mr Yves Fermon (from a meeting in 2004 in Paris), and that he's an occasionnal member of AquAgora... I knew he was once in this area of the world, but I had no idea he had worked on Pseudacanthicus gender...

I'm gonna ask him for more references... Send him a mail and I'll give you news as soon as I have any.

ElTofi wrote: I'm gonna ask him for more references... Send him a mail and I'll give you news as soon as I have any.

Superb! It would be nice to know something about the method of capture as P. serratus is a deepwater species.

Haavard Stoere wrote:

ElTofi wrote: I'm gonna ask him for more references... Send him a mail and I'll give you news as soon as I have any.

Superb! It would be nice to know something about the method of capture as P. serratus is a deepwater species.

Yes indeed, there are some great pictures in "Le Bail, P.-Y., P. Keith, and P. Planquette. 2000. Atlas des Poissons d’Eau Douce de Guyane. Tome 2, Fascicule II, Siluriformes." (which I'd love to have in the catelog) including one of the Pseudacanthicus however it's a plain black fish. It matches the description we've been discussing less than the picture of the fish from Peru.


Jools

Jools wrote: Yes indeed, there are some great pictures in "Le Bail, P.-Y., P. Keith, and P. Planquette. 2000. Atlas des Poissons d’Eau Douce de Guyane. Tome 2, Fascicule II, Siluriformes." (which I'd love to have in the catelog) including one of the Pseudacanthicus however it's a plain black fish. It matches the description we've been discussing less than the picture of the fish from Peru.
Jools

I am just speculating, but could the black color be the adult coloration, and the more spottet the subadult coloration? Examples of this could be L65 and also the Pseuda Christophe bred a year ago.