Pencilfish ID..?

[ste12000]

Over the last few years ive become very interested in the pencilfish family and have bred and raised quite a few, one of the first fish i owned a good few years ago were these ones, i cant seem to get a definitive ID on the species, can anyone help?

 

[afra]

They could be Maralynae.

 

[Mike Wise]

Yes, that's what I was thinking, too. Do you have any other information on these fish, like location, other fish shipped with them?

 

[bigbird]

very nice and agree that it could be the same..cheers jk

 

[a.d.wood]

Not a group of fish I'm that familiar with but...

What features stop an ID of Nannostomus bifasciatus for these fish?

Andrew

 

[Mike Wise]

Well, they might be N. bifasciatus. I tend to go with N. marilynae due to color (more golden than white background). N. marilynae is often confused with less colorful populations of N. trifasciata. N. bifasciatus comes from areas not frequently collected by commercial collectors. N. marilynae is often collected with specimens of N. marginatus and N. trifasciatus in the central Amazon. They often are found in mixes of pencilfishes in shops. I'll look for my Weitzman papers on the genus and get back sometime tomorrow with a better answer. Again, do you have any other information? Under what name were they sold? What other fish were with them (especially other pencilfish)?

 

[ste12000]

Sorry Mike, its been several years since these fish were inported, i was sold them as Nitidus but thats not correct. Ive looked at both of the mentioned species online but cannot find many accurate pictures of the genus!

I was thinking more like N.digrammus or at least cf. digrammus???

 

[Microman]

Steve/Mike,
If these are the fish i got in a couple of years ago they came into the UK via Glasers as wild N.nitidus, single shipment, not mixed. Had 2 shipments of "Nitidus" from Germany at different times that looked like different species.
No collection information at all....
Mark...

 

[Chromedome]

It is Nannostomus digrammus, one of the more common yet most frequently misidentified species of the genus. The red spots in the dark band down the side, presence of an adipose (which eliminates bifasciatus, btw), and two dark stripes. This species has been mis-identified as bifasciatus in the past, as the two are fairly similar, but bifasciatus actually has a smaller range in the Guianas, where digrammus can be found in parts of the Amazon basin.

N. marilynae is called the Greenstripe Pencil for a reason. The area between the two stripes would be narrower on marilynae, as well.

Everyone always wants them to be the rare species, but they rarely are; that's the meaning of "rare".