ID this catfish - Trichomycterus ??

[amiidae]

Fm Colombia. 15CM TL.

[Martin S]

Hi Ben
I can't see these images as they are on PhotoBucket. Can you upload them directly?
Thanks
Martin

[amiidae]

Here is a better shot.

[amiidae]

[amiidae]

Hi Ben
I can't see these images as they are on PhotoBucket. Can you upload them directly?
Thanks
Martin

Hello Martin,
Can you view the post above ?

[amiidae]

side view.

[Bas Pels]

What a beauty

[Jools]

Trichomycterus punctulatus

?

Jools

[Kryptic]

I'm by no means an expert with these catfish so take my words with a grain of salt. With all the info provided my guess would be

Trichomycterus spilosoma

, as this species exhibits the same kind of fine spotting on the body and fins. Also on the dorsal and caudal fin you can see the colour turning into more darker than that of the body.

[amiidae]

Thanks for the inputs.
Few other fishes came in with this Trichomycterus sp. - Batrochoglanis raninus, Pseudopimelodus bufonius & Cephalosilurus apurensis .

Here is another shot.

[amiidae]

Trichomycterus punctulatus

?

Jools

Hello Jools,
I think you are right on the ID.

[Jools]

Jools

[Shane]

At the risk of throwing a wrench in the works... Why would a Peruvian pacific drainage species be exported from Colombia alongside three species found in the Colombian llanos? Why would someone transport a nondescript unpopular aquarium fish 1,750 miles for resale when Colombia has dozens of its own nondescript trichomycterids?
-Shane

[Shane]

Amiidae,
I would start with BOLETÍN CIENTÍFICOCENTRO DE MUSEOS DE HISTORIA NATURALLAS ESPECIES DEL GÉNERO TRICHOMYCTERUS (SILURIFORMES: TRICHOMYCTERIDAE) EN COLOMBIA which lists 29 described spp of the genus from Colombia and another 5 that have been collected but not described.
You can quickly remove the six subterranean Colombian spp as well as those described from super remote locations where there is no commercial collection.

I would focus on spp described from the llanos basins first for a possible match (since there are only three!) but would not ignore the other major basins as the highest concentration of the genus in Colombia is located in the Rio Magdalena.

Trichomycterus dorsostriatus (Eigenmann, 1917).Localidad tipo: Colombia, departamento de Meta, Villavicencio, cuenca del río Meta. Holotipo: FMNH 58096. Hábitat: Epigeo. Distribución: Sistema Orinoquía

T. migrans, Rio Meta

T. steindachneri, a small tributary outside Bogota.

-Shane

[Jools]

Hi Shane,

From the desc. of Trichomycterus steindachneri, DoNascimiento, Prada-Pedreros & Guerrero-Kommritz, 2014
T. dorsostriatus - background light yellow with superficial layer of densely mottled dark brown
T. migrans - dark band or row of spots from just above the gill-opening to the base of the upper caudal-fin rays
T. steindachneri - colour background dark brown with a thin mid-lateral dark stripe

Like your thoughts with respect to geography - didn't pick up these were direct Colombia exports but makes sense given C. apurensis in there. None of these species are however spotted all over - geographically, the closest spotted species I know was the one I suggested. More promising might be T. cachiraensis, "ground colorlight brown with three lateral rows of small dark spots".

I can't get at the PDF you mention (it's running on a computer only barely connected to the computer, link times out, it's at https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... OLoOkr56zk), so if anyone has this, would be worth a read, I'll keep trying.

Cheers,

Jools

[Shane]

I think the bigger issue, and I should have called more attention to it above, is that there only three (maybe four) described spp from the largest drainage in Colombia. I think it was well worth looking at the described spp, but I doubted a match (unless we got very lucky). Not enough work has been done with this genus to start with a premise that we can match it to a described spp. Heck, the authors turned up 5 nominally new spp just looking at current collections!

Maybe T. sp "Colombia" noting it came in with fishes collected in the Colombian llanos region of the Orinoco basin. However, this does not guarantee provenance.

There was another interesting paper I came along (I can't remember the sp) that noted the pattern and size of spotting, and in some cases a complete lack of spots, varied so widely that they ran DNA. No spots, heavy spotting, large spots, small spots... all were genetically the same sp.

If this is wide spread in the genus it does not bode well for hobbyists making identifications from superficial characteristics.

-Shane

[Jools]

Yup, we'd want to start with knowing where it was collected.

Ben - any info on this? Also, if it's possible to share, what would one of these fishes sell for in Singapore?

Cheers,

Jools

[amiidae]

@Shane, @Jools,

Thanks for the information and inputs.

I am not familiar with this importer. so no other information from them. In fact, they didn't have any clue about this fish. They labeled it as "catfish" LOL.

I have contacted Oliver Lucanus since he got some T. punctulatus last year and he imported them fm Peru. Also, he suggested perhaps the cat in question might be T. bogotensis or T. taenia.

One for USD35.

[Jools]

Thanks Ben,

Hmmm, wonder who discussed that ID with Oliver... Cool, so next job is to discount (or get lucky!) the two new species Oliver suggests. Bit offline at present, will attempt to get to it over the next week.

Jools