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Hello

I was at LFS last night and saw a school of really pretty fish labeled glowlight harlequins. The look very similar to harlequin rasboras, except that the wedge is smaller, their bodies more silvery (almost see through) with an iridescent orangey pink glow.

I can't find these fish on the profiles. Does anyone know anything about them? I'd like to get a small school.

Cheers
TW

Robyn,

Look up the profile for Trigonostigma espei. Ignore the name and just look at the picture. That is Trigonostigma hengeli, another cousin of the harlequin.

Does it look like that?

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Maybe it is. These are the ones you have, is that right? Do they sort of glow? Is the colour iridescent?

Will they school (even loosely) with my rasboras?

Thanks,

Cheers
TW

Yeah, they should all school together even though they are a little different. I have 9 regular harlequin rasboras and 1 bLack rasbora (actually more purple than black), and the others let him swim in their group. It's really cool to watch them gather all together in one spot at night.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

No, that is not the ones I have. I have the true Espei, the one this profile is written for. The case is that the picture is wrong, at least the one on the profile page itself. If you select the "More Photos" link under the picture then you can see the one I have.

Again, this one is called Trigonostigma hengeli and Bensaf has them.

I saw Espei and regular Harlies school together in the LFS, but there were not many options for them to do otherwise as the tank was small. It would be interesting to see what happens when you have two sufficient sized groups in a sufficiently sized tank. Would they form one school or not? I don't know, maybe you will tell us some day.

The one thing that I am not too wild about is that you mix two fish that most likely (never investigated this aspect) be able to interbreed and as such create a hybrid.

Ingo

EDIT: I didn't see Melissa's entry until I posted mine. But if I am not mistaken, her black Rasbora is a color morph of the regular Harlie, and as such the same species. Is that right Melissa?

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

I didn't think of the inter breeding thing. What to do??? I really would like these fish, they are sooo pretty. Chances are the fry wouldn't survive - none have so far, but I know there is a chance. If I got overcrowded, to begin with, I could make sure I only gave LFS the original - but I guess I could eventually run out of those.

I saw your pic, BTW, Ingo & agree that yours didn't look as much like the fish I saw as the official photo did. Nice fish pic you have, as always.

Cheers
TW

Ingo, the only info I have been able to find on my black rasbora is some of the same fish for sale at Fish2U online and they are listed as: RASBORA HETEROMORPHA...which is the same scientific name of the regular Harelquin rasbora, I think. Here's just a pic I found....Mine looks like the one on the bottom left: http://site.yahoo.com/ekkwill/blacrashet.html

My one little black one schools in fine with the others, but maybe they don't see the color difference and they know he's the same kind of fish.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

Oh Oh Oh, I am very excited

By chance I just found This Site.

It has all 3 trigonostigmas on one page, including the one that says "Black harlequin, an artificial bred morph."

Never saw a link that sums it up sooo nicely

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Great link Ingo! I did not know that about the black rasbora. I just saw them at the LFS one day and thought they were pretty...by the time I got my ick outbreak under control there was only one left, so he cam home with me and 9 regular harlies. That was a very informative article.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

i have 9 of these fish in my tank and they seem to get along with every thing in my tank. They hang around at the back and eat all types of food.They have become one of the fish in my top 5

Great link Ingo. Thanks for finding it. I think the fish I saw is most likely Trigonostigma heteromorpha, but that particular shot was a bit on the dark side. These fish I saw bright & iridescent. They did appear to glow (like neons do) under the tank light.

Next time I'm there, I'll see if I can get them to tell me the proper name, instead of "glowlight harlequins".

Did I miss it, or did the article say anything about whether they'd inter breed.

Melissa, I've never seen the black ones. Very nice fish.

Thanks to everyone for input.

Cheers
TW

Yeah, I really love my one little black one! Poor little thing...in there by himself with all the "normal" harlies. They accept him though. LOL

Good luck with you harlies....no matter what species they are, they are beautiful fish.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

Having taken a look at what was an excellent site that Ingo linked to, I have one problem ... the images of T. espei and T. hengeli are a pain to tell apart - if they weren't captioned, I'd be tempted to say that they were the same fish photographed under different lighting conditions!

So what exactly IS the difference between T. espei (which was originally described, if memory serves, as a subspecies of T. heteromorpha instead of a true species in its own right) and T. hengeli?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Cali,

I think you need glasses

No seriously, I hear you. They are not easy to distinguish. But if you look back at the link above and focus on the close-ups where all you see is one fish in full lenght from the side then you will notice the main visual difference - Orange. The hengeli has only a very small area that is orange, usually a stripe obove the black extension to the tail and a small area in front of the small black triangle (which by the way, is proportionally smaller than the T. heteromorpha's triangle).

Espei, on the other hande, have pretty much an all orange body, except for the black part and the belly on the bottom side. Males are even more reddish than orange (see my fish photos in the Photo Booth or skim through my monster log) when they are in breeding mood, pretty much after each water change.

Besides the visual differences, if the link's reference to the fish origins is correct then espei are from "The Mekong river basin; Cambodia, eastern Thailand, maybe also in southern Laos" while hengeli are from "Sumatra and Borneo".

And, as you know, many fish have been initially mis-classified and espei and hengeli are some of them

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club