Diamond rainbow fish

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Diamond rainbow fish
Diamond rainbow fish (Melanotaenia praecox)

Diamond rainbow fish ( Melanotaenia praecox )

Systematics
Ovalentaria
Superordinate : Earfish relatives (Atherinomorphae)
Order : Earfish (Atheriniformes)
Family : Rainbow fish (Melanotaeniidae)
Genre : Melanotaenia
Type : Diamond rainbow fish
Scientific name
Melanotaenia praecox
( Weber & Beaufort , 1922)

The diamond or neon rainbow fish ( Melanotaenia praecox ) is a freshwater fish from the rainbow fish family known as an aquarium fish .

features

The body of the diamond rainbow fish is neon blue with red dorsal, anal and caudal fins. The body length is 6, rarely up to 8 cm. The sexes are relatively easy to distinguish: The coloring of the somewhat smaller females is paler and their fins are usually yellowish-orange.

Occurrence

The diamond rainbow fish is native to the Mamberamo river system in West Papua , New Guinea , where it was first collected in a tributary by the Dutchman WC van Heurn in 1910. There it lives in slowly flowing and often tea-colored small jungle waters due to rotting vegetation.

Others

Diamond rainbow fish in the aquarium

Due to its color and its small size for rainbow fish, the diamond rainbow fish is particularly suitable for keeping in an aquarium. Living specimens were brought to the USA by an aquarist in the early 1990s and to Europe by the adventurer Heiko Bleher and are now commercially bred around the world.

In 1998 animals very similar to the well-known diamond rainbow fish were found in small streams and swampy ponds in Tirawiwa, a tributary of the Wapoga near Siewa, about 200 km west of the Mamberamo basin. These specimens have meanwhile been described as the new sister species Melanotaenia rubrivittata and differ genetically from the fish from the Mamberamo basin and morphologically by red longitudinal stripes between each row of scales.

literature

  • Johannes Graf: In search of the neon rainbow fish . Amazon No. 22 March / April 2009; 5 (2); 58-64
  • Heinrich winner: rainbow fish. The genus Melanotaenia . Natur und Tier-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86659-154-7
  • Heiko Bleher : Mamberamo . 1994 Aqua Geographia 7: 6-35.
  • Heiko Bleher: The Fish of the Century . 1995 Fishes of Sahul 9 (1): 385-391.
  • Weber, M. and LF de Beaufort (1922): The fishes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Allen, GR, Unmack, PJ & Hadiaty, RK (2015): Melanotaenia rubrivittata, a new species of rainbowfish (Melanotaeniidae) from Northwestern Papua Province, Indonesia . Fishes of Sahul, 29 (1): 846-858.

Web links

Commons : Melanotaenia praecox  - collection of images, videos and audio files