Splashing Tetra ID

[Apistomaster]

I managed to get four photos out of over a dozen which are clear enough to make out more details. I only have the six specimens in a 20 long and they never hold still.

 

[ste12000]

Hi all, i cannot beleive ive not seen this thread earlier!! all the best fishkeepers discussing one of the greatest groups of fish available.. Im also a big fan, i import direct from Peru with little interest in the cardinals and assorted tetras i bring in, my interest is in the pencilfish and copella sp that come in as contaminents!

For the last two months ive ordered both Copella 'red line' and Copella arnoldi(knowing full well it will not be true arnoldi) both lots have been the same fish which i put as C.nattereri ???

The first group have been with me for aprox 6-7 weeks and yesterday i placed 6 fish of both sexes into a smallish breeding tank with only 3 broad leaved silk plants. Ph aprox 6.5, TDS 40ppm and temp 80f. Ive been out all day to a fish show/auction but returned to a clutch of eggs on the surface of a leaf, im a little disapointed to miss the spawning but pleased that they were so eager to spawn, ill continue working with these in the hope of recording a few essential details in the form of a article(eventually).

Eggs on leaf(look carefully as they blend in very well!!)

 

[Apistomaster]

I have bred a Copella species which to my eyes looked exactly like your fish.
Some on line dealers are selling a spotted Copella species under the wrong name and they are the same fish as shown in photos in the link below. I had a a dozen but I did not get any to spawn that I know of.
These are also sometimes called red spotted Copella although it would take some imagination to see them as "red spotted".
http://fishindex.blogspot.com/2008/07/spotted-copella.html

 

[ste12000]

I have bred a Copella species which to my eyes looked exactly like your fish.
Some on line dealers are selling a spotted Copella species under the wrong name and they are the same fish as shown in photos in the link below. I had a a dozen but I did not get any to spawn that I know of.
These are also sometimes called red spotted Copella although it would take some imagination to see them as "red spotted".
http://fishindex.blogspot.com/2008/07/spotted-copella.html

I know the fish in that link to be C.meinkeni ??? the problem is a real lack of accurate, detailed information on this genus.

 

[Chromedome]

The redlines are not nattereri, I forget what Marilyn Weitzman said they were. However, I have bred the fish in Apistomaster's link, and she verified that as probably nattereri. It's also identified as such in Characoids of the World, which was my real intro to these amazing fish. I have gotten a spawn from that species back in the early 80s. The male actually pulled down the edge of a floating Echinodorus leaf, and the pair slid onto the leaf and spawned in the puddle on top without breaking the surface tension. I removed the eggs, but unfortunately was unsuccessful at raising the fry, as I had no experience at the time with such tiny larvae.

It should be noted that there is another species with the spotted pattern of nattereri, except that the spots are solid wine red. In nattereri, the spots are brown with a tiny red dot in the center. I've had both, as well as the red line. When I was living closer to the lake and had municipal water, odd things would spawn spontaneously, but since I've moved to my current residence, the well water is so hard that I have to cut heavily with R/O for most of my soft water fish, and it just doesn't seem to have the "magic ingredients" of Lake Michigan water.

 

[ste12000]

http://www.vertebrate-zoology.de/Zool_Abh/02_Copella.pdf please check page 24 on this PDF.. Also have a scroll through all the pictures. Unfortunately these are all in German and i cannot read them without using translators that mess up the majority of the words..

Also have a look here..

C.nattereri
http://apisto.sites.no/fish.aspx?fishIndexID=1797&gruppeID=5

C.meinkeni.
http://apisto.sites.no/fish.aspx?fishIndexID=2465&gruppeID=5

And here for the rest
http://apisto.sites.no/slekt.aspx?gruppeID=5

Upto now these are the best and most recent online research tools on this group of fish.

 

[Chromedome]

I was not aware of this information, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! It's been several years since I've talked with Marilyn about these fish, she's probably already aware of all these changes. If you pay attention to the notes, however, you can see that the fish now labeled as meinkeni was known as nattereri for several decades, even by ichthyologists. This is another of those instances where the fish we thought was one thing for a very long time turned out to not be that fish, but something else, even undescribed. These references are now tagged on my computer, I will have to examine them and bring myself up-to-date.

I will have to dig up my old slides and scan them into the system, with corrected labels, of course!

 

[ste12000]

I was not aware of this information, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! It's been several years since I've talked with Marilyn about these fish, she's probably already aware of all these changes. If you pay attention to the notes, however, you can see that the fish now labeled as meinkeni was known as nattereri for several decades, even by ichthyologists. This is another of those instances where the fish we thought was one thing for a very long time turned out to not be that fish, but something else, even undescribed. These references are now tagged on my computer, I will have to examine them and bring myself up-to-date.

I will have to dig up my old slides and scan them into the system, with corrected labels, of course!

No problem at all although it is Tom Christofferson that we really need to thank, ive simply linked to his site, he has done the hard work!!

Im enjoying this thread and would like to continue the talk, maybe we can pinpoint a few more Copella Id's and all learn something new.

Aswel as C.arnoldi and C.nattereri i also have 3pcs of this fish, they were bought from a club auction as splash tetras(suprise, suprise!) so i cannot put a location or even country of origin, although i will be asking the importer at next months meeting!!

Any one guess at what species? im thinking C.nigrofaciata??

 

[Apistomaster]

I bought the spotted Copella from Portland, OR's wetspottropicalfish as C. nattereri. I did not spawn this species.
I bred the fish ste12000 posted and raised almost 90 fry to adults. They resembled C. nigrofasciata but I doubt very much that they were originally caught in SE Brazil. Their spawning was actually accidental. I had a ten gal tank with a mat of Riccia covering the top and was trying to breed a group of Epiplatys annulatus but since i never saw any fry i replaced them with the C. nigrofasciata(sic) look alike and later found I had Fry but at first I couldn't tell whether they were E. annulatus but they eventually proved to be the Copella.

I am been very pleased and amazed at how many of us are interested in Lebiasinidae.
They deserve more frequent importation and there are some species which are quite colorful. Except for those I bought on line all the rest were found as by catch in shipments of various Nannostomus species..
The last type I was trying to collect from by catch among Nannostomus is the "Zipper Splash Tetra" which some books call Copella metae. They are a very distinctive looking species well worth getting if you can find some.
I was never able to find enough in time to form a group. I missed some at a time when I thought they would show up again but unfortunately that never materialized.
I still have about 8 Pyrrhulina cf. spilota but I am not trying to breed them. They are in my planted 125 gal tetra tank. wetspotropicalfish has them presently at 6/$27. They also have been keeping the Copella cf. nattereri in stock for much less.

One of the larger and more colorful species I have kept is Copella vilmae which I bought as Rainbow Copella from anubiasdesign.
I had a dozen but some six years later we only have one old survivor being kept in my 84 year old mother's 30 gal community Tetra tank which also has some of my F1 L333 and two Mikrogeophagus altispinosus and Red phantoms, Green Neons and she bought six H. serpae thinking they were the same as the Red Phantoms which were dying out slowly due to old age.

 

[HaakonH]

This is a very useful thread, so instead of creating a new one I thought I'd just continue using it to solve my little mystery!

I received some beautiful Pyrrhulina this week, they came in as P.laeta but I think they might be P.brevis or something similar. I'm no expert on these guys, so if anybody can add their thoughts I'd be gratful. Here they are:

Haakon