Dario sp. Jaintia Hill # 1

Dario sp. Jaintia Hill # 1, originally uploaded by creativeaquarist.

Well today is my birthday...lol...I don't "feel" another year older...in fact I feel much better than now than I did in my thirties...now that's kind of strange. I decided to treat myself and I bought a group of these to breed.

They are so rare that it's very difficult to find much information on them at all. I know the family and sub-family they are related to...but as far as this particular species goes they are very hard to find and even harder to find breeders who have worked with them and know all the tricks of keeping them healthy and breeding repeatedly.

This is going to be a learn as you go experiment I see...lol. I do know these are very tiny fish...only getting to be around an inch to and inch and a half tops.

I have rasboras that are like that but they aren't tempermental...I hope these guys/gals aren't either...because they sure weren't cheap! I know they come from India in very remote areas and are not easily collected...although they are starting to be interesting to American breeders...hopefully more people will start breeding them and collecting information about them and passing it along.

This is what little I have found out about the family or species they are closely related to and it's scant.....

"Prior to 2002 the family Badidae included just five species of which only B. badis and, to a lesser extent, 'Badis' dario were popular in the aquarium hobby. However an extensive revision paper by Kullander and Britz published that year resulted in the erection of no less than ten new species along with the genus Dario into which 'B.' dario was moved and designated the type species. Dario currently contains three members which are most easily distinguished from Badis by their small adult size (usually less than 1"/2.5cm), predominantly red colouration, more extended first few dorsal rays/pectoral fins in males, straight-edged (vs. rounded) caudal fin, lack of visible lateral line and less involved parental behaviour. All were previously considered to represent 'Badis' dario. There are also a handful of undescribed species from India, Bangladesh and Myanmar so the genus is set to grow in size over time.

Badids have historically been considered members of the families Nandidae or Pristolepididae and it wasn't until 1968 that Barlow proposed a separate grouping for them. They share some characteristics with anabantoids, nandids and channids; most notably the typical spawning embrace in which the male wraps his body around that of the female. Recent studies have concluded that this procedure is an ancient trait inherited from a common ancestor to all these families. In the 2002 revision all Badis, Dario and Nandus species were found to share a uniquely bifurcated (split) hemal spine on the penultimate vertebra and the authors hypothesised that this may represent evidence of the monophyly of this group. They further proposed that the family Nandidae should be restricted to include only Nandus species with the other genera, Polycentrus, Monocirrhus, Afronandus and Polycentropsis, grouped together in Polycentridae. Following this system the Nandidae and Badidae are only separated by differences in morphology and egg structure although the phylogenetic relationships between them are yet to be fully-studied."