Colombia – Inirida, 2 December 2009
Heiko Bleher did research for the first time with the native fisherman Pedro from Inirida and Senhor Ernesto in a very remote small creek called Caño Sardiña, a right-had tributary of the upper Caño Bocón, which is an affluent of the Rio Inirida in Colombia. This tiny Caño was very difficult to enter with a small dugout but had an incredible wealth of fishes including some new species. Here hear one can see a few of the nearly 50 different species he found and a nice video from Natasha of this underwater habitat and its fishes including Cardinal tetras.
The Caño Sardiña Heiko did do research in at 2 December, during one of his Amazon expeditions in 2009, is an tiny tributary of the upper Caño Bocón in the Río Inirida basin in Colombia. This Caño with its Tea-brown water hosts a wealth of fishes, almost unbelievable as to how many different species live together in such small body of water and each one has its niche. Heiko was able to find nearly 50 different species and Natasha did a video under water of it. Below, some photos of this amazing biotope and the film.
The “entrance” and the small Caño Sardiña…
This place was as it looks, never visited by man before and Heiko went underneath the overhanging roots of giants trees and found very interesting species there. See blow:
The real Poecilocharax weitzmani, here a male, never collected or photographed alive before, as the one in the hobby and shown alive in scientific literature is a different species, from the one Géry described (see also Bleher’s Discus volume 1, page 485).
Crenuchus spilurus – a beautiful variant – here a male.
There was also below the roots, deep into the darkness hidden, the tiny Elachocharax species, possibly new to science or E. pulcher, and very interesting beauty for Nano aquariums.
Two different Carnegiella species near the surface: C. strigata (right) and C. marthae (left).
This Iguanodectes looked like I. geisleri, but different morphology.
The upper is somewhat similar to the Amazonian Hemigrammus coeruleus and the lower similar to Hemigrammus bellottii. Both beauties for any community biotope aquarium.
The upper is Nannostomus trifasciatus with an amazing red colour patter, in the centre possibly a new Nannostomus species, quite different from N. eques. And the lower is a very nice still not identified Copella species.
And then beautiful groups of very large Cardinal tetras, Paracheirodon axelrodi in the hand net. (See below the video of this habitat and under water filmed by Natasha while Heiko was collecting.)
There were several cichlids in this small biotope. One was this beautiful dwarf Crenicichla (upper) and one and an Apistogramma species which reminded us of A. iniridae (lower).
Heiko found seven different knife fish species below the roots in the darkness during day.-time, here only 4 of them and then also catfishes, here a single small Farlowella species and also a very beautiful shrimp.
The Caño Sardiña is a very narrow creek and difficult to enter only a small part of it we were able to enter with the big boat. Unfortunately on the way out the roof of the Mariposa was damaged and its rood collapsed… But we had great fun and 50 species for this small habitat collected by Heiko in a couple of hours was not bad… Below Natasha’s video, of this habitat we entered deep and some underwater sequences also of the Cardinal tetra biotope.
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