PlanetCatfish.com

Hi All,
I found this single specimen at a PetSmart, next to another tank with several "C. julii". I will examine the 'julii' separately, but the single specimen shown here definitely caught my attention. I bought it without a second thought and I would like to run my first (poor) pictures of it by you knowledgeable people here, in the hope that they may allow an id. It has been swimming constantly (2 days) so it is hard to get better shots.
I think it resembles most C. bilineatus Knaak (lineage 5), from Bolivia. How it could have gotten to PetSmart is a mystery as I don't think this species is sold too often, at least not where I live.
Color characters I see are the light and dark longitudinal striped pattern, and the black triangle on the dorsal fin. It is small, just over 1 inch (2.5 cm). Unfortunately the quality of my pictures is bad enough not to allow observing other nuances. I will continue to attempt obtaining better views.
Thanks in advance!

Hi FJB.

Great find at a Petco. You should try to find out what Petco had ordered it as (was it ordered as "julii" (their "julii" are really , but they always get sold as )). Regardless of the answer, ask them to place another order for whatever they thought it was, and see if any more come in.

Looking forward to better pics.

Good luck with it.
Cheers,
Eric

Many thanks!
I will definitely try to get better pictures and post them.
Unfortunately no additional information came from PetSmart. They did not know anything beyond that the single fish came as an 'odd one' in their regular biweekly shipment, and that it came together (contaminant) with the 'julii'; all others were 'julii'. So all we know is that it came from 'Florida'. My guess is that the contamination occurred in tanks in 'Florida', involving mixing mass bred ('julii') and wild cories. A lucky find for me.

Ok, still not very good images, but this may provide additional information, hopefully allowing identification. In quarantine for at least 1 month.
Color characters I see (probably not all of equal importance): 1) light and dark longitudinal striped pattern, 2) black triangle on dorsal fin, relatively high up on fin, 3) first bony ray of adipose and pectoral fins dark, 4) central dark stripe extending past end of caudal peduncle, into caudal fin, not extending vertically up and down. And yes, that is one of the 'julii' I got, altogether 5 cories, but already one of the 'julii' died. Hopefully the rest will survive.
Thanks again!

https://www.planetcatfish.com/corydoras(ln9)_sp(c133)

Jeanne

Hi FJB,

The biggest struggles I'm having is seeing the shape of the fish. The color pattern of this fish is very consistent with several lineage 5 corys (bilineatus is a lineage 5 fish). However, the shape of the head and snout is ambiguous in almost every photo because of the angle of the fish relative to the camera. In your initial post, the fish appears to have a mouth positioned at the bottom of the face, like a lineage 9 fish. But in your newer photos, that's neither reinforced nor clarified as lineage 5 (with a mouth in the middle of the face).

First, it would be helpful to get photos in focus (obviously). That can be hard to do with cell phone cameras, unless you can find a manual focus mode (on my samsung, the camera feature is called "Pro" and it's listed in the "More" menu when choosing between photo, video, etc.).
Second please don't combine photos into a collage. That makes each individual photo smaller and more difficult to see its detail. You can upload multiple photos (at least 6) to a single post, so you don't need to make the collages.

Honestly, is a pretty close match if your fish is a lineage 5 species. What throws it off from other similar lineage 5 fish is that it appears to have a large solid black blotch at the top of the dorsal fin. ( has a series of black lines or smears through the dorsal fin, rather than a single black blotch).

In lineage 9, there are a number of striped species, and a number of species with a large black blotch at the top of the dorsal fin, but I'm unaware of any species that have both.

Keep the photos coming!

Cheers, Eric

Hi All,

In my humble opinion, this is closest to: https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/im ... e_id=10100
Looking at the last picture it is very close, and the middle line goes into the tail like in this fish.
Great looking fish whatever it is!

Thank you both.
Here are some additional pictures, unfortunately not much better but hopefully useful together with previous. I guess a combination of excuses (yeah, excuses)- Poor skill (plain and simple); Quarantine tank is hexagonal and very scratched-up, making for difficult angles for viewing; fish keeps swimming, hopefully not due to stress or bad shape.
Regardless, I just lost another of the 'julii' (trilineatus), so I am now down to only two of those and the fish in question, and it has been less than a week since purchased. Not a good statistic. I guess they arrive at the store in rough shape...

A couple more...

I do believe that Characinkid has got it right

Jeanne

Thanks again!
I am definitely seeing quite a strong resemblance with Corydoras (lineage 5) napoensis. It is too bad the quality of my pics is so low, and will try to get better shots.
In addition to the color "characters" I mentioned before from my specimen, I do see a strong resemblance in the markings on my fish's forehead and across the eyes with those on the few pictures of napoensis, more so than those on the picturesa of bilineatus. Unfortunately, not many images available of either taxa. The fish on the last picture of napoensis on this site (a pair) look most similar to my specimen, even more so than the rest of the images where the longitudinal stripes are less well defined. But I have very little experience with cories and that is why I brought the question here.
I am very happy with the finding of this specimen and hope it survives the initial period and lives long. We will see...

Slightly better... looking more colorful too.

again

Napoensis is still the closest commonly imported cory to your fish, but there's something about your fish that just doesn't look like napoensis to me.

Cheers, Eric

Thank you Eric. I am very happy with it, and it is coloring up nicely. I wish it was 10 of them, not 1. That way one could see variability in color and pattern. Unfortunately, it is just the odd one. It and 2 trilineatus who are together in quarentine are going in a tank that currently has another 2 trilineatus and a reticulatus that also arrived as an odd one some time ago.
Cheers!

In this post by snowball from Dec. 12, 2020 (viewtopic.php?t=49658), the specimen shown is compared with sp(CW029), and with sp(CW105). Although no conclusive interpretations were possible or given, it was suggested that the specimen resembles most C. sp(CW029), more so than CW105. Unfortunately, that specimen also came from the 'pet trade' (thus no locality data).
I think that specimen is the closest to the specimen I have offered for id in this thread, more so than the photos available of C. napoensis or C. bilineatus. Would this be of help in interpreting my specimen?
Below, the photos discussed in the thread by snowball , and at last one of my specimen.
Thanks!

Here is the CW029