Apistogramma from Colombia

[illumnae]

I recently ordered some Apistogramma lineata from a Colombia shipment, as they have been particularly hard to find here in Singapore. The fish are still at the importer's facility so I don't have good pictures, but the importer just sent me a video of 2 males flaring at each other. What appeared strange to us is that while the fish had the uaupesi type tail, the dorsal appeared to be spikey/serrated at the front instead of a sailfin type of dorsal as would be expected. I'm not able to upload videos here so I attach a screenshot of the video instead.

Any idea what species I got instead of lineata?

 

[Mike Wise]

Not from that photo. I don't know if I could identify the fish unless I knew in which river it was collected.

 

[illumnae]

Is it not unusual to have an apisto from Colombia with that tail shape and spikey front dorsal rays? I thought they all had smooth sailfin dorsals

 

[CRD]

Is it not unusual to have an apisto from Colombia with that tail shape and spikey front dorsal rays? I thought they all had smooth sailfin dorsals

I'd wager when the dorsal membranes are not damaged, they are smooth. Looks like wear/tear in the picture...

 

[illumnae]

Cool thank you! I'll head down to the importer's facility with my camera sometime this week to try and get some shots. Anything in particular I should make sure that I capture?

 

[illumnae]

Any of these photos help? They're not all of the same fish, snapped what I could from the tank containing 10 fish that came in as 5 pairs of Apistogramma lineata

 

[Mike Wise]

Well there are at least 6, maybe more uaupesi-like species/forms in the iniridae-group. It could be any of these based on these photos.

 

[illumnae]

Well there are at least 6, maybe more uaupesi-like species/forms in the iniridae-group. It could be any of these based on these photos.

Thank you! So there's nothing distinctive to identify it as A. lineata or otherwise? How are the 6 species/forms distinguished from each other?

 

[Mike Wise]

Sorry, but not based on these photos, at least by me. If you are willing to do meristic studies on a preserved specimen, I'm sure that you could separate them fro those scientifically described species that it could not be. Several of the undescribed D# species we know nothing about except that they come from different (still mostly undisclosed) locations. Some people more knowledgeable than me are skeptical about the validity of some of the species already described. This is why I wrote, "I don't know if I could identify the fish unless I knew in which river it was collected".

 

[illumnae]

Thank you very much! It's unfortunate that the various uaupesi complex species cannot be differentiated from observable traits. I was hoping that I managed to get Apistogramma lineata, as it would be something new for me (I've kept Apistogramma uaupesi from the Rio Negro before). I'm not able to find out the exact collection point, but this batch of apistogramma did come in with a batch of atabapo altum angels. Other Colombian fish did come along too though, so it's not a confirmation on locality