Hi DM,
Wishful thinking that it would be so easy! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Seriously though, thanks for sharing. Since last summer,
Microglanis have been my obsession and I've spent (literally) weeks worth of my waking hours trying to learn all I can about them. The fruit of that labor is that here on Planetcatfish, the
Microglanis genus is relatively well-populated with photo examples and information (
https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/ge ... d=106#3772).
To answer your question, first I must ask, did you buy this fish at the same time as you did the other?
There are a lot of
Microglanis coming into the United States, almost always sold as
or
. That's because those two species are reportedly found in waterways shared by Eastern Columbia and Southern Venezuela, and from the region around Leticia in Southern Colombia. The fish are getting exported from these areas, so the exporters slap one of those two names on the fish. But
M. poecilus looks nothing like these, so that ID can't be correct.
Right now, I've got 44 fish (all sold as the same species) from the same supplier, and I'm convinced I've got at least 3, maybe 4 species mixed together (see here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=49481). A sample of the variation in my group is shown in the image attached to this post.
The best answer I can give you is this: Assuming your fish came out of the same area, it would most likely get ID'd as
M. iheringi. But the break in the brown saddle under the dorsal fin and the incomplete brown bar between the adipose and anal fins indicate to me that this fish is not
M. iheringi. That said, if you ask the scientists working on
Microglanis, for now, their published data suggest that
M. iheringi is a highly variable species spread over a wide area. (to me, that's code for "it's probably more than one species, but we don't have the evidence yet."
)
I hope that's helpful and clear... at least as clear as mud.
Cheers, Eric
