We started on a cold and misty Saturday morning from Coimbatore (bout 120 kms away) and reached Valparai at around noon. The first spot yielded what are the most beautiful Puntius fasciatus I have ever seen.They were collected from a small fast flowing stream running beside a coffee estate. The water was around 2-3 feet deep and the temperature was around 20 C. There was no vegetation in the stream.Unfortunately we didn carry any equipment to measure water parameters.
Pic soon after twas collected.
These pics were taken the next day and they seemed to retain their colour even in the aquaria (atleast to a decent extent).
Other species found here were Danio malabaricus and something that looked like Puntius arulius.
From then on, we spent bout 4 hours hitting every possible stream looking for some other fish. Absolutely zilch
. Since Valparai is filled with coffee estates, the use of pesticides should be wide spread and the recent monsoons must ve flushed the damn things into the streams. We could find only P.fasciatus,P.arulius lookalike, Barilius bakerii , a Garra species and to all our collective disgust, Platies..... everywhere. Of all sizes and colours. We scouted 3 or 4 more streams and started to get discouraged. The finall spot (Shekkalmudi) proved to be a goddamn gold mine.We reached there at around 5 PM and found :
Travancoria jonesii
Mesonemacheilus herrei
And finally!!!!!!!!!
Glyptothorax davissinghi (???)
I have been collecting in South India quite regularly but never has a trip ended with such a high note ever. I have this thing for Sisorids and collecting 'em for the first time put me in a haze for a brief period.
They were collected from a slow moving stream in Shekkalmudi Road, Valparai. The substrate was primarily mud with very little rocks. They were collected from inside bunches of a Lagenandra Sp found in abundance there. The fishes themselves were not plenty though. An hour's collection yielded 7 G.davissinghi's ,5 T.jonesii and 3 M.herrei's. Unfortunately we couldn collect longer as we were shooed away by the locals who were spreading sorta an elephant alarm. This is apparently quite common in this area.
This trip was made in the second week of December and 2 of us decided to visit the same place again. We headed there on the 9th of January. This time, we headed directly to the spot where we had collected the Glyptothorax earlier. After various delays we reached the spot at around noon. In case you thought this thread was gonna end on a happy note think again. Zero Glyptothorax. None. No stone was left left unturned literally but no sign of 'em. We tried some distance upstream and downstream as well but nope. We collected some big M.herrei,Bhavania australis (???) and Homaloptera menoni.
Homaloptera menoni.
Possible reasons for absence of the Glyptothorax :
1) Twas noon the second time. More heat ( though the water was a tad cooler this time around even though twas noon).
2) They have moved upstream or down stream.
3) Hoping this could not be the reason but we might have collected all of 'em from the spot during the first trip.
These Glyptothorax are doing really well in the aquaria. I ve had some really bad experiences with other SIsorids but this time its working out really fine. He s in a tasnk with some Pseodulagvia's H.jerdonii and H.hara. Water temperature is at around 23 C (with the help of 2 fans) at the moment. Dreading summer though.Ambient temperatures can hit 40 C routinely here.
All picture credits to my friend Madhu. All I have is a Sony Mavica and its ready to be shifted to a museum anytime now.
Habitat shots were taken too and will be uploaded in a day or too. Valparai though calls for another trip and this will hopefully materialise in a month's time. Pics of the fish in the aquaria will follow too. A few random shots around Valparai :
And of course not forgetting all the other fish 
)
