There are species of ornamental fish that are kept and bred already for such a long time that their conspecifics living in the wild are almost unknown now. Such a species is Aphyocharax anisitsi, the Bloodfin tetra. The first importation was back in 1906. The fish proofed to be easy to breed and very productive. Nowadays Bloodfin tetras are represented in the pet shops all over the World almost exclusively by bred specimens; wild collected ones are hardly ever available.

So it is very interesting to see the wild specimens we were able to import now from Paraguay and to compare them with the bred ones. The most obvious difference is the varying coloration of the wild ones, whereas the bred ones look very uniform in this respect. The red coloration differs in the wild ones from almost absent to extremely intensive. On a photo the red colors look sometimes virtually artificial!

 

So aquarists who are interested in biological research have now the unique opportunity to study the sense of this different coloration. It is not very likely that the difference is a secondary sexual dichromatism (more red = males). Males of A. anisitsi can be recognized by fine hooks on the anal fin that appears as silvery reflections on the photos. So one can clearly see that the most colorful is a female in this case!

 

Lexicon: Aphyocharax: means "tiny Charax"; Charax is another genus of tetra. anisitsi: dedication name for Prof. J. Daniel Anisits, the collector of the type specimens, at the time working at the National University of Paraguay.

Common name: Bloodfin tetra

 

For our customers: the fish have code 206413 on our stock list. Please note that we exclusively supply the wholesale trade.

Text & photos: Frank Schäfer