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I was just at the petshop and I was looking at a tank filled with harlequin rasboras. Some looked familiar but they were babies, and there were 5 that didn't look like harlequin rasboras and they were about 1 inch big. Do harlequin rasboras change there coloration as they grow older or was it a diffrent fish in a wrong tank?

Quiet possibly they Espei Rasbora. The two are often confused. The Espei has similar black marking to the Harlequin, but the body is more silver and orange, the orange becomes more intense as the fish matures.

Could also have been Hengali. The black marking is slimmer and mlore elongated then the Harlie and they have an irredescent orange stripe above the black marking.

Both of the above are great fish, tight schooling and just as hardy and easy to keep as the Harlequin but harder to find. If the fish you saw were either of these you might want to go back and grab them. The Espei can be a very pretty fish when it matures.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

The fish I saw had a black bar running down vertically behind the gills. It looked like a morphing of the har. rasbora but had diffrent fins and coloring.

HMMM.... the vertical bar throws me. I've seen a rasbora that's very simlar in color to the rasbora but the name escapes.

To answer your other question yes there are morphs of the Harlequin. I know of at least one the Black Harlequin - darker body and black fins.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

But harlequins don't change their color patterns during their life do they?

They don't change their patterns as such, but depending on their age and breeding stock the colors can become more intense.

A lot of Harlequins for sale now aren't always the best quality. The black triangle can be less distinct and intense, and the edge where the black meets the red less sharp.But a normal Harlequin is not going to change into a Black Harlequin, it's bred that way and if born a black or normal will stay a black or normal.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Thanks, I noticed that also about the low-quality colors. Half of the rasboras at the lfs are dull and only a couple have very striking colors.

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-20 23:02][/span]