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AMAZONAS
92
SPECIES SNAPSHOTS
Hypoptopoma sp. “Iquitos”
An armored catfish that I
4| recently received from our correspondent
in Iquitos, Martin Mortenthaler,
via the firm EFS (Sonneberg), is
probably a new species of the genus
Hypoptopoma (subfamily Hypoptopomatinae).
This large-growing species
doesn’t appear in the most recent revision
of the genus by Aquino & Schaefer
(2010). Martin obtained the fish
from a fisherman who had purportedly
caught them in the vicinity of Iquitos.
The overall size of the fish is striking.
My largest specimen measures
5 inches (12.7 cm) TL, which is larger
than all the other species I have kept
to date. The black patterning on the
dorsal and caudal fins is likewise
unusual for the genus Hypoptopoma.
Hypoptopoma sp. “Iquitos”, as I have
provisionally named the species, also possesses the
mucus typical of the genus. These fishes spend the entire
day sitting on wood and only become active during
the night. They then streak around the aquarium and
nibble at the food tablets that I put in before lights out.
REFERENCES
Hypoptopoma sp. “Iquitos”
—Hans-Georg Evers
Aquino, A.E. and S.A. Schaefer. 2010. Systematics of the genus
Hypoptopoma Günther, 1868 (Siluriformes, Loricariidae). Bull Amer
Mus Nat Hist 336: 1–110.
Male Chinese Sleeper
Goby, Sineleotris saccharae
Sineleotris saccharae, Chinese Sleeper Goby
For many long years, fishes from China were vir-
5| tually impossible to obtain. But now, increasingly
larger numbers of interesting fishes are arriving from
the south of that vast country. The gobies and loaches
are particularly fascinating to aquarists. An especially
lovely species has been imported by Metop Aquarium
(Czech Republic) from Aquaculture Technologies in
Singapore, whose director, Patrick Yap, was interviewed
in the November/December issue of AMAZONAS.
With a maximum of around 6 inches (15 cm) total
length, Sineleotris saccharae is one of the medium-sized
H.-G. EVERS