please help my paranoia is this a royal whiptail

[calsonic]

my parrents bought me this whiptail a while ago as i kept looking at it for ages every week when i went to buy surplies im fairly certain its a royal whiptail (Sturisoma Panamense) however it was marked up as a common whiptail witch i know its not however i need to know for definate so i can start looking for some more for when i set up a new tank soon.i think they payed £9 for it so hopefully i got a bargin either way its one of my favoret fish hes about 6cm's now he was about 3cm when i bought him/her at least two months ago

anyway heres the best picture i have of him



forgot to mention that if the picture is any use for the cat-elog and you would like to use it id be honoured


(Mod Edit to show picture directly)

[Richard B]

It IS a sturisoma, but exact species is often extremely difficult to pin down as there are a lot that are very similar & some literature can be misleading.

[MatsP]

Unfortunately, matching these by buying individual new ones is not easy, since there are a lot of very similar looking species, as well as the labels in the shops are often incorrect (and usually not the shops fault, as the shop is unlikely to question/correct the wholesalers information unless it's very obviously wrong). Sturisoma are covered by the Mergus Catfish Atlas vol. 1, so you at least we do have some literature on the subject.

The best approach of you want to breed these is to buy a bunch at once. That way, you have a reasonable chance that they are the same species.

They appear to be able to hybridize, so shop-bought fish may not be "pure".

By the way, judging by

Sturisoma panamense

, which under ID says:

Another elegant species confused with S. festivum (and thus S. aureum). This species can be distinguished by the fins which, while spectacular, do not have the trailing extensions of S. festivum.

It looks like yours do have trailing extensions on the caudal fin. Unfortunately, that doesn't get us much closer to what species it IS - but at least we know it isn't what it was sold as, which is just further evidence of "shops often have them labeled incorrectly".

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Mats