Angels - PageSuite

AMAZONAS
90
SPECIES SNAPSHOTS
➊ TAREBIA LINEATA ➋ SCLEROPAGES INSCRIPTUS ➌ SCHISTURA SPILOTA
➍ HYPOPTOPOMA SP. ➎ SINELEOTRIS SACCHARAE ➏ BIOTODOMA WAVRINI
Banded Melania Snail, Tarebia lineata
Tarebia lineata, Banded Melania Snail
Some months ago, Aquarium Dietzenbach in
1| Germany imported a little snail species from
Indonesia that has almost never been seen before.
Tarebia lineata is an attractive yellow-brown turret
snail with fine black-brown lines. The shell is about an
inch (2.5 cm) high and .4 inch (1 cm) across. In the
wild it is often covered in black deposits. The coils are
slightly convex, but have nodules immediately beneath
the seam, making the transition from coil to coil very
clear. The sole of the foot is white to pink in color.
The snail is pigmented gray on its head and body. The
species belongs to the livebearing and parthenogenetic
snails and hence should breed easily in the aquarium.
Common in Asian rivers and ponds, it is sometimes
regarded as a form of Tarebia granifera, the Quilted
Melania Snail. That isn’t of primary importance to the
aquarist, whose main interest is in having another attractive
invertebrate to watch in the aquarium.
—Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand
Scleropages inscriptus, Inscribed Arowana
The arawana from Myanmar introduced in AMA-
2| ZONAS Vol. 1, No. 2 has now been described.
Ichthyologist Tyson R. Roberts described Scleropages
inscriptus from the Tenasserim basin. This river, which
empties into the Indian Ocean, is home to many fish
species that have been described in recent years or
are still awaiting description.
Interestingly, Roberts doesn’t accept the species
of the S. formosus complex described a few years ago.
Only S. formosus, and now also S. inscriptus, a species
clearly distinguishable on the basis of meristic and
color characters, are placed together in the subgenus
Delsmania and thus treated as separate from the
Australian species S. leichhardti and S. jardinii. From
an aquarium-hobby viewpoint, Scleropages inscriptus
hasn’t yet appeared in numbers worth mentioning.
That may soon change, at least in Asia.
REFERENCES
—Hans-G. Evers
Roberts, T.R. 2012. Scleropages inscriptus, a new fish species from
the Tananthayi or Tenasserim River basin, Malay Peninsula of Myanmar
(Osteoglossidae: Osteoglossiformes). Aqua, Int J Ichthyol 18 (2):
113–18.
Schistura spilota, Spotted Hillstream Loach
Schistura spilota is proof that large hillstream
3| loaches are not that unusual. S. spilota can be
2 inches (5 cm) bigger than Schistura sp. “Arunachal
H.-G. EVERS