Please help me identify this fish
Hello fellow Steemians! I require some assistance. A few weeks ago I received some new fish for my community tank.
At first I thought they were Desert Gobies - which are usually quite colourful. They were an almost uniform brown when I first got them so I did some checking and came to the conclusion that they were Chinese Gudgeons.
Now that they’re nice and comfortable, their colours are coming out and i’m leaning back towards thinking that they’re Desert Gobies again. I’ve done a lot of research trying to identify these fish and I see that Desert Gobies and Chinese Gudgeons are very similar. They look more or less the same and occupy a similar niche in their ecosystems. There is also a great deal of overlap in their geographical distribution. In fact there are so many similarities that I think they may indeed be the same species.
Are there any fish enthusiasts on Steem that can help me identify these fish?
I’d really like to get a positive identification. So if you think you know what these fish are please let me know in the comments below. Whoever provides the best answer before this post pays out will receive 1 Steem and the total value of the payout for this post. Thanks Steem!!!
According to the results of the scan in an app called Fishverify, your fish is of the bowfin species. See the screenshot below:
Furthermore, this species is not regulated in your area:
Happy fishing! ;)
Thanks for the reply @fullabeans
That’s a really cool app!
I don’t think these fish are Bowfins though. The Bowfin has a very similar body shape and fin arrangement, but the juveniles have very different colouration.
With the flourescent stripe on the fins and its translucent skin you might be right about it being a gudgeon or a goby
Congratulations @fullabeans
You are the winner! I will send you your reward shortly.
Under the conditions you set out, I guess that fullabeans does get the reward, which is a bit spurious as they were not even close to close in their identification of this fish, which is worse than not commenting at all.
They all look so similar, but i’m yet to find a definite match. Sometimes I wonder if it’s an unidentified species.
No, it is definitely an identified species. It is an Empire Gudgeon, I have kept hundreds of them in the past. Bred most of mine myself.
Not even close to similar. The gudgeon has a tin dorsal arrangement to the fins, the bowfin one single, long dorsal. The caudal fin and perduncle, completely different, the body shape not even similar. And then we look at the gudgeons long, singular anal fin.
How could these two even be compared?
Sorry for not being able to upvote.
The fish is an Empire Gudgeon, Hypseleotris compressa, part of the Australian goby complex. The pictured fish is a male, denoted by the red finnage.
It has no relationship to the snakeheads or bowfin families.
It is an ambush predator, hiding in caves or logs and snatching its prey suddenly and aggressively. DO NOT KEEP WITH SMALLER FISH!!! They can fit something up to their own body weight into their cavernous mouth and stomach.
Breed in caves, with the male providing limited egg care, but no fry care.
First bred in the early 1990s (I was one of the first I could find), infusoria and tank mulm provided the trick to getting fry to survive past a couple of weeks.
THIS IS A POSITIVE ID. DEFINITELY THE EMPIRE GUDGEON!