ID: Puntius johorensis?

[CK Yeo]

I think it is P. johorensis.
What do you guys think?



ck

[ranmasatome]

How come P. johorensis got horizontal lines one??

not Puntius lineatus meh?

[CK Yeo]

Puntius johorensis not horizontal lines one eh? Uncle choy have picture of it or not?

According to fish base Puntius lineatus is 5.3cmSL. This one already way pass that. Something about the barbels passing the eye etc.

There are similar one that are huge ones at Seaview but i am not sure if they are they same.

ck

[hwchoy]

ranma, don't be confused by the science centre book which listed P. hexazona as P. johorensis. this is clearly one of the four or five striped barbs, without taking a closer look, it could be johorensis, lineatus, eugrammus or the others that I cannot recall the names now.

[Quixotic]

Striped barbs again!

There are 3 that look similar, Puntius (or Systomus) johorensis, P. lineatus and P. gemellus. There are some differences in the size, stripes and the barbels.

This is what I gathered from a pretty old thread from Petfrd, http://www.petfrd.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8829

P. lineatus has 0-1 pair of barbels (don't ask me why 0-1, maybe Choy can explain), has no rostral barbels.

P. gemellus has thinner stripes and a short dark line immediately below the dorsal fin.

For P. johorensis,

Fish at least 30 mm SL with 5-6 stripes on body. Caudal peduncle with stripes +1 and -1 on scale rows +2 and -2, respectively and do not touch the dorsal and ventral midlines except in some small specimens taken from the Malay Peninsula (Ref. 37849).

However, number of stripes may not be definitive, they could have 4 stripes.
(Stripe 0 is the stripe on the lateral line, stripe +1 is the one above it, and stripe -1 is the one below it, and so on.)

Stripes look pretty thick to me, so probably P. gemellus can be excluded? Then the presence/absence of the rostral barbel will confirm if it is P. johorensis or P. lineatus.

My guess is P. johorensis. Choy should know better.

Justin, P. johorensis development (you need to login to view the pictures), http://www.petfrd.com/forum/showpost...8&postcount=39

[CK Yeo]

What about P. eugrammus? How to tell them apart?

Is the information on fishbase on the size of P. lineatus accurate? If yes, then this is not P. lineatus.

ck

[hwchoy]

the stripes will increase as they grow so unless you have a fully grown adult the stripe count may not be accurate.

personally I prefer to place them in genus Systomus as clarified by Tan, Ng, et al. One of the key traits of Systomus vs Puntius is a serrated dorsal spine in the former.

[CK Yeo]

Huh? What is the serrated dorsal? Sell knifes huh?
I had a closer look at the dorsal spine, there are 2 shorter ones before longest one. Is this what they are referring to?

Without having to read the paper () can someone summarize what are the species reclassified into the genus Systomus? Or we shouldn't bother because it is not accepted by the scientific community yet and are likely to change their mind sometime later?

ck

[ranmasatome]

This is cool.. thanks Choy..

Got close up shots a not ah CK?

[CK Yeo]

Close up of what? Head?
2 sets of chew chew (i.e. barbels) lor.
No "fleshy lawer jaw" either.



Even closer up


(Something wrong with the mouth.)

ck

[hwchoy]

you see the top right corner of the close up pix? the dorsal spine has "saw tooth". this is also why you sometimes can small barbs like hexazona entangled in your net because the dorsal spine has poked through a hole and wouldn't come back out because of the backfacing tooth.

[CK Yeo]

This eh?



ck

[hwchoy]

yes