Colombia – Caquetá, 7 December 2009
This creek Heiko explored by walking over land with Natasha and Alirio and reached this almost untouched small waterway discovering many miniature fish species in a mini-habitat. This is to show how little space some fishes live all their live, often smaller then a very small (Nano)aquarium. In the Caño Tonnina was one area where the creek broadens and in a 60 cm deep hole Natasha was able to film the cichlids living there, including a red-lip Hero species, possibly new. Enjoy…
Along the right bank of the hardly 6 metres broad Caño Tonnina below this small water fall in the deep jungle, and the dark over-hanging tree-roots, below the surface deep under these roots (lower photo), in the complete darkness, Heiko found a variety of miniature fishes, together with some knife fishes, see below…
Nannostomus cf. digrammus – 17 mm SL…
Apistogramma cf. bitaeniata – 26 mm SL (possibly only a different bitaeniata population)…
…two different species of Elachocharax, sp. 1 (upper) and sp. 2 (lower) – 12.5 mm and 11 mm SL (respectively) and a tiny shrimp which was much bigger than the latter…
Odontocharacidium cf. aphanes – 13 mm SL…
Crenuchus spilurus – 21 mm SL…
Steatogenys cf. duidae (upper) and Microsternachus aff. bilineatus (lower)…
…and Ancistrus sp. 1, almost certainly a new species, all living in this tiny, nano-biotope.
Below a video made by Natasha from the same Caño Tonnina, but in the open water, further down stream, in a hole hardly 6o cm deep and maybe 1.5 metre across, the rest of the creek was very shallow, although the rainy season had started already
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