Nannacara sp 'Rio Oyapock'

[ste12000]

Hi all, a while ago i received a F1 pair of Nannacara sp 'Rio Oyapock' from a good friend of mine. After some damage in transport the fish were split to recover separately and recover they did, they were recently placed together in a community type tank in my fishroom until a breeding tank became available.

They didnt want to wait that long and recently spawned and brought a brood to freeswimming in a busy tank, i have had no option to syphon the fry to raise them separately after witnessing several get eaten today. I am happy to get fry but unhappy with the amount of information on these fish, there is talk that they could be a population of N.aureocephalus but i dont subscribe to that, i feel they are a good species in their own right.

Does anyone have any information on this fish? apart from a few German forum posts i have been able to find little on this species.

 

[Mike Wise]

I can't say whether or not it is the same as N. aureocephalus. I have never seen decent photos that show any real differences. Right now, N. aureocephalus is known from French Guiana and the border state of Amapá, Brazil. The Oyapoque Rivière/Rio Oyapock forms the boundary between the 2 countries. N. aureocephalus has had several names in the past, based on collecting locality, body color and amount of spots on the fins: N. sp. Mana, N. sp. Sourourou and N. sp. Approuage. Your N. sp. Rio Oyapock may just be another. That being said, there is another undescribed species from the same area (N. sp. Yiyi), but it is very different, with a scale pattern more like the aquarium form of N. anomala.

 

[oaken]

Interesting fish. I thought it was interesting to see the Nannacara from Crique Yiyi get mentioned as well. We caught that species, which we just figured was N. anomala, in August last year. Worth mentioning is that Crique Yiyi is quite far away from Oyapoque. Crique Soumourou (this is the correct spelling) is inbetween. N. aureocephalus can also be found at Fourgassier which is somewhere in the middle between the Soumourou and the Oyapoque populations. I will attach a lousy (my camera had started to fog up after being in the car with the AC on) field photo of the fish from Yiyi. Maybe you can make something out of it.