I have these Cory species and when they were purchased they all were misidentified, I think! Can anyone tell me exactly what species they are? In the first picture the fish one in the lower right hand corner has a different body pattern than the rest! Any thought?
I am not sold on the fish in the first photos being agassizi. It looks like the black in the dorsal fin goes back too far on the dorsal fin on at least two of them. In agassizi, the black spots should be confined to the anterior portion of the dorsal fin (if they are there at all).
The two fish with the finer spots are probably Corydoras delphax. I agree with the ID's in the other photos.
I like delphax as the possible ID of the two "outsiders" in the top picture. I was thinking along those lines.
I based my agasizzii ID on the size of the spots. Hardly scientific, I know. I've got several mystery corys that came along with some leucomelas I purchased from a fellow club member a few years back. At first, I thought they were female leucomelas. But it's become obvious they aren't.
Based on some descriptions of C.ambiacus I've read (from seriouslyfishy.com if I remember right) - "the black stripe on the first few dorsal rays run half way up" I'd say that is another possibility besides C.agassizii for the "non-delphax" ones in the first picture, I do agree with Narwhal72 that the ones with the dark stripe running all the way up the dorsal are most likely C.delphax, but I am not very good at these spotted types.
Ron, I keep up on Cory breeding a lot ;) and I haven't heard of anyone being able to crack C.leucomelas. I would also lean more towards C.rabauti on the middle picture rather that C.zygatus, but the best way to figure that one out is to breed them - the fry of C.rabauti look a lot different from the fry of C.zygatus.
Here's a link to a good thread explaining the difference between zygatus and rabauti. There's a picture of a C.rabauti fry in this thread which in my opinion looks really cool! Now if I could only get mine to breed!
Yes the one in the back and the one in the front have different body patterns and not spots (Sometimes Called False Blochi) like the one on the right side top:
Sorry for not combining my responses into one post. Haven't had my coffee yet.
Andy,
I was just throwing zygatus out as a possibility for the fish in the middle picture. You're right--the fry are the definitive indicator. I have some fish that were sold as rabauti, but what do you know, when they spawned they were revealed as zygatus.
In the Alexandrou article in the back of Ian's Identifying supplement, I seem to remember it saying that rabauti and zygatus are closer to each other than they are to others in their lineage (the aeneus group).