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misgurnus - but which?The pictures below are of three fish I bought as weather loach; however I'm inclined to think they're not weather loach (misgurnus anguillicaudautus) but rather misgurnus mizolepis, which is referred to variously as Chinese Weatherfish, Chinese Muddy Loach, Chinese fine-scaled weather loach and a variation and combination of these names... I've also found a suggestion that I might need a license to keep them in the UK, though the site (which is an official one) contradicts itself. bah. Any ideas would be welcome. I love these fish, they are utterly unique. Their movement through the water and across the sand and tank furniture is a joy to watch and they have real character - they love investigating fingers and hands in the tank and their super-speed hunting for food by smell alone (I suspect they are effectively blind) is hugely funny. They hide in some ridiculous places and rest in even more ridiculous places (looped over the filter outlet, just behind the flow; hung over a suction cup; sideways half-wedged under a shell). They shovel dementedly through the substrate like a dog at a rabbit hole, sucking sand in through their mouths and spitting it straight out through their gills, often burying their pectoral fins. Sometime they shoot straight up to the surface of the water, fart or burp squeakily and shoot back down again to stay immobile on the floor. Sadly they are jumpers. I lost one through an almost invisible gap, a second has three permanent kinks in its spine - I can't be sure how the first two got there but I saw (and heard) the injury that caused the third; the fish shot straight out of the water and hit the hood of the tank with a suprisingly loud bang. As for the third one, I had taken the hood off the Q tank and removed half the water in preparation for catching them and moving them to their permanent home and it managed to get out of the tank and a couple of metres across the carpet in the thirty seconds or so it took me to ask my son what he had done with the net. It managed to pick up an amazing amount of fluff, too. When I grabbed it back it wrapped itself round my index finger with an astonishingly tight grip and didn't want to let go even back in the tank...  the smallest and first. This fish is actually slightly more golden and less grey than this picture would suggest. mmmmm, flash photography and aquariums, my favourite.  One of the two bigger fish; they (were) almost identical except this one has a slightly bigger black "spot" at the base of the tail. These two are greyer and darker than the little one - or they were when these pictures were taken, they have now all become more pale gold and less grey. This fish sadly escaped from the quarantine tank through a very small gap and died... The gaps for the wiring in the hood are now not just covered but also weighted.  The same fish. A few months down the line and the two remaining fish have grown - the little one faster than the "kinky" one; I reckon all those injuries have slowed them down. The colour change is quite noticeable, too:   If anyone can give me a definitive name for these fish I would be delighted. You can email me here: sophie-w@blueyonder.co.uk or reply on a forum/newsgroup if that's where you found this. And finally. What can I say about this?  |