Stowaway Cory ID

[prairiefire]

I have around 50 of these that came mixed in with a box of corydoras hastatus from Peru. Any Idea what they might be ? They are about 18 mm SL. There are several more species that where also mixed in I will try to photo them soon.

[The.Dark.One]

Corydoras sp(c126)

?

[prairiefire]

I was looking at the c-126 pics but none of them seem to have the black blotch on the dorsal fin. On another forum C. napoensis was just suggested And it looks to be pretty close.

[Mike_Noren]

Howcome the cat-elog pictures of "C126" look completely different from each other? Looks like three different species to me?

[Birger Amundsen]

Corydoras napoensis

?

[MatsP]

Seeing as the C. hastatus are from Guapore in Brazil, it was probably not caught together with either of C. napoensis or C. sp(C126), as these come from completely different areas (Rio Napo and Rio Madre de Dios respectively).

--
Mats

[Mike_Noren]

Perhaps the "hastatus" are pygmaeus? It's listed from Napo and commonly confused with hastatus.

[The.Dark.One]

The body lines seem too clear and extend too far into the anterior of the body for me for napoensis. Do a google search and you will see that some male C126 get a blotch, females tend to get lines (similar to what happens in napoensis and bilineatus).

If they are hastatus then these could be bilineatus rather than C126.

[MatsP]

Perhaps the "hastatus" are pygmaeus? It's listed from Napo and commonly confused with hastatus.

Ah, good point. I sometimes trust the original ID too much when working out something that came along with it... ;)

--
Mats

[prairiefire]

I just checked pictures of C.hastatus and C.pygmaeus and it looks like they are indeed pygmaeus . I don't see any dark spots developing near the tail fin. There seems to be 4-5 different species mixed up in that lot, it is quite the mess. I'm thinking they just threw together any cory that was tiny and called them hastatus. On the bright side it looks like there are some small orange lazers mixed in as well.

[Coryman]

If you check the river systems then you will see the the Madre de Dios runs into the Rio Beni, this in turn runs into the Rio Mamore, which joins the Rio Guapore are all connected, all be it to encompass all three junctures would cover a vet large area. Therefore it is quite conceivable that fish collected in either of these rivers could be cmixed before arriving at a distribution station.

In the images of C126 in the Cat-elog the background is very bright and has washed out the dorsal colour, but it is still visible.I would definitely go with C126. C bilineatus is very close to C. napoensis and does not have the very bold body stripes.

There should be no confusing C. pygmaeus narrow silvery black stripe along the center of the body. C hastatus has a white edged black diamond blotch at the caudal peduncle.

Ian

[prairiefire]

Well I was cleaning tanks this morning and discovered that there are also C. hastatus present. Not sure how many but I'm guessing about 5 - 10 percent out of the 600 or so corys that were in the box.

[RickE]

I used to love direct SA shipments for this very reason. Picking through the boxes of Cories and Apistogrammas to see what you'd really got. Great fun.

[Mike_Noren]

Well I was cleaning tanks this morning and discovered that there are also C. hastatus present. Not sure how many but I'm guessing about 5 - 10 percent out of the 600 or so corys that were in the box.

...and hastatus doesn't occur in Peru.
It sounds like you've got a random grab-bag of cories from the wholeseller, and not even the country of origin can be trusted for identification purposes.

[prairiefire]

Ok I have another photo it is a bit small but If I try to photo them in the holding tank all I get is a big blur. So is this C.hastatus or C.pygmaeus ?

[Richard B]

That looks like pygmaeus

[minkweir]

1st are napoensis, 2nd are pygmeus...I have 9 napo and 60 pygmy in my 4' tank as we speak

[mummymonkey]

I've attached an image of a

Corydoras bilineatus

male. It's very close, if not identical to the original fish.