Malabar fish
| Malabar fish | ||||||||||||
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Malabar fish ( Devario aequipinnatus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Devario aequipinnatus | ||||||||||||
| ( McClelland , 1839) |
The malabar fish ( Devario aequipinnatus , Syn . : Danio aequipinnatus ) is a small freshwater fish that occurs on the Indian subcontinent .
features
The malabar fish has an elongated body, strongly flattened on the sides and relatively high in front. The belly line is more bulged than the back line. It reaches a maximum length of 12 cm to 13 cm. The back of the animals is steel blue to green gray. The sides of the body are patterned by three to four steel-blue vertical stripes, which are separated from each other by narrow golden stripes. The longitudinal stripes begin above the pelvic fins and reach down to the tail fin stalk. The head is silvery, the iris gold, the gill cover shimmers gold or greenish. Directly behind it are some gold-colored horizontal stripes on a blue background. The pectoral fins are colorless, the rest of the fins pink or bluish. Females are more dull in color than the males and are fuller. The mouth is slightly above. It is flanked by a pair of barbels on the upper jaw. The mandibles are stunted. The sideline is complete.
- Fin formula : dorsal 2 / 10–13, anal 3 / 12–16, pectoral 1/14, ventral 1/7.
- Scale formula : mLR 35–37.
Way of life
Malabar fish live as schooling fish in flowing waters up to a height of 300 m above sea level. They mainly live near the surface and feed on insects that have fallen on the water surface, crustaceans and worms.
Aquaristics
The malabar fish was introduced to Germany for the first time in 1909 and has been part of the standard range of pet supplies ever since. For a long time it was uncertain whether the fish introduced for the aquarium hobby were Devario aequipinnatus or the closely related and very similar Devario malabricus . The German name Malabarbärbling, derived from D. malabricus , was transferred to Devario aequipinnatus after the identity of the species was certain.
literature
- Hans A. Baensch , Rüdiger Riehl : Aquariums Atlas, Volume 1 . Mergus Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-88244-101-1 .
- Günther Sterba (Ed.), Gert Brückner: Encyclopedia of Aquaristics and Special Ichthyology. Neumann-Neudamm, Melsungen u. a. 1978, ISBN 3-7888-0252-9 .
- Günther Sterba: The world's freshwater fish. 2nd Edition. Urania, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-332-00109-4 .
- Axel Zarske: Danio aequipinnatus. In: Claus Schaefer, Torsten Schröer (Hrsg.): The large lexicon of aquaristics. 2 volumes. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-7497-9 , p. 318.
Web links
- Malabarfish on Fishbase.org (English)
- Devario aequipinnatus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2010. Posted by: Vishwanath, W., 2010. Accessed April 28, 2011th