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One day a couple of these tetras appeared in a tank at work, and neither I nor any other employee know what they are. They are a male and a female, and it seems like they spawn 24/7 (though I haven't seen any fry). They are seriously the horniest fish I've ever seen.

They are deep-bodied, and pretty much solid gold in their front half, red in the middle, and have a puplish caudal peduncle. The female is larger and not as colorful as the male. They enjoy spawning and nipping the fins of their tankmates (which is why I haven't bought them). They resenble the Flame Tetra (Hyphessobrycon flammeus), but they have no black pigment anywhere.



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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I was going to suggest you'd alighted upon some Kitty Tetras, but yours have no black in them, while the Kitty Tetra has black markings on the caudal peduncle similar to the Silver Tip Tetra.

To make matters even worse for identification purposes, just about EVERY Google image search result for "Kitty Tetra" throws up images of fishes that are definitely NOT Kitty Tetras - including Columbian Red Blues!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Kitty Tetra - at last, one with a proper taxonomic identity! Classified in 1994 by Costa & Gery as Hyphessobrycon loweae, the Kitty Tetra actually looks to some extent like a yellow version of the Diamond Tetra (at least in the photos sitting in front of me as I type this!), with the same red eyes as a Lemon Tetra, and is sexually dimorphic. Females are but apale shadow of the impressive males, with their golden livery, and gold fins edged in what seems to be luminous lipstick pink, almost as if painted on by hand, yet thankfully a product of Mother Nature and DNA, not the dread hand of the fish dyer! Females have much shorter fins than the males, and a green abdomen to boot, so telling them apart should be easy even for the novice. And now, the even better news for those licking their lips at the prospect of owning Kitty Tetras - not only are they relatively tolerant of a wide water chemistry spectrum, most of the European stock at least is now tank-bred and therefore even easier to acclimatise. Likely to look utterly gorgeous against a backdrop of dark green foliage, and will probably become even more brilliant on the infamous Calilasseia Lemon Tetra conditioning diet of live foods four times per week interspersed with colour flakes ...

From somewhere on this site. http://www.fishprofiles.com/articles/freshwater/newtetras.asp the link to it (don't remember how I got there)


So I think we can rule out Kitty Tetras.

http://www.scalare-fulda.de/20040321.JPG is the closest match I have found.

link to to the site (unfortunately in a different language). But the site says Flammeus...but they look more like your tetras. Perhaps this is a color varient of Hyphessobrycon Flammeus?


Hmmm....

Last edited by Tetra Fan at 05-Jan-2006 20:33

Last edited by Tetra Fan at 05-Jan-2006 20:34

Appeared? How'd they do that?

I have seen fish before which were labeled as "fancy Von Rio" tetras, and appeared to be just like the ones in your pics. They had no black on them, and featured the same orange to red coloration. The fish otherwise looked like flame tetras to me, so it's possible that they're just a color variant.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Albinos of something?

20 Gallon Long:
Aquaclear 300
2 Bolivian Rams, Mikrogeophagus altispinosus: Gumby and Pokey

Not albinos, because the pupil of the eye is still black. True albinos lack all capacity to manufacture the black pigment melanin, and consequently the eye pupils look red. Check out just about any albino fish you care to name - albino Corys, albino Redfin Sharks, albino Metriaclima zebra Cichlids, they all have red pupils.

I'd say offhand that if these are a colour variant of the Flame Tetra, then the correct designation would be a Xanthic morph, because these fishes have much more yellow present than the standard Flame Tetra..

Incidentally, the visible difference between male and female was one of the reasons I originally thought "no, can't be a Flame Tetra of any sort" because most Flame Tetras I've come across have little difference between male and female, whereas these fishes are noticeably sexually differentiated.

They're also the wrong body shape for an Apricot Tetra (which in any case has very distinctive anal fin markings) and the Apricot Tetra isn't a hyphessobrycon anyway.

This one could run and run ...



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002