Striped cichlid
| Striped cichlid | ||||||||||||
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Striped cichlid ( Etroplus suratensis ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Etroplus suratensis | ||||||||||||
| ( Bloch , 1790) |
The striped cichlid ( Etroplus suratensis (named after the Indian city of Surat on the coast of the Arabian Sea )) occurs on the coast of India and Sri Lanka in coastal fresh waters, in brackish water and in the sea.
features
It has a disc-shaped, very high back and laterally strongly flattened body and is up to 40 centimeters long. Females stay a little smaller. Otherwise the sexes can hardly be distinguished. The relatively small mouth is terminal. The basic color of the fish is variable and depending on where it was found, gray-black, greenish, yellowish or reddish. The lower part of the body appears blackish because of the lacquer-black bordered scales, the belly white. The head, body and fin bases are covered with numerous silvery to mother-of-pearl colored dots, which is why the cichlid is called "Pearlspot" in English. The fins are bluish to greenish, the pectoral fins yellow with a black spot at the base. The flanks are patterned with 6 to 7, in most cases not very clearly visible, cross bars. Animals living in the sea or in very salty brackish water should be more colorful and deep black or purple-red at spawning time.
Fins formula : dorsal XVIII – XIX / 14–15, anal XII – XIII / 11, pectoral 15–16. Scale formula : mLR 35–40.
Way of life
The striped cichlid occurs mainly in brackish water, e.g. B. in the backwaters in the southwest Indian state of Kerala , in lagoons and the mouths of larger rivers. It only occasionally goes into pure fresh water and can even be found in the sea near the coast. It feeds on all kinds of plant material, thread algae and insects. Striped cichlids are substrate spawners who attach their clutch to stones or pieces of wood. The fish form a parent family , both parents take care of the eggs and young fish.
literature
- Günther Sterba : The world's freshwater fish. 2nd Edition. Urania, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-332-00109-4 .
- Anton Lamboj: Etroplus suratensis. In: Claus Schaefer, Torsten Schröer (Hrsg.): The large lexicon of aquaristics. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-7497-9 , p. 368.
Web links
- Striped Cichlid on Fishbase.org (English)
- Etroplus suratensis in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2013.2. Listed by: Abraham, R., 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2014.