Every
child has heard about piranhas. Piranhas are predatory tetras. Many
horror stories are told about piranhas, most of them lies. The silver
dollars are close relatives of the piranhas. They also have sharp or
broad teeth, but they use them to bite off pieces of plant material or
to crack nuts and seeds.
The
medium sized (15-20 cm) species belonging to the genus Metynnis feed
mainly on plant material. The members of the genus can be recognized
easily by the typical shape of the enormous adipose fin. We could import
very pretty young Metynnis from Venezuela, which most probably belong
to the species M. orinocensis.
As
a bycatch a small number of “red hooks” were sent along with the
Metynnis, most probably Myleus rubripinnis. Myleus are seed-crackers.
The large mouth and the large teeth are adaptations to that behaviour.
Myleus become larger than Metynnis, one should expect that they reach
about 25 cm: Adult fish look totally different and are much more
colourful than the youngsters. They are perfect show fish for display
aquaria.
Only
one specimen of another species of Myleus reached us from Paraguay,
This fish represents most probably an individual of M. tiete. Even in
the very young specimen the very large dorsal and anal fins are very
obvious.
For our customers: Metynnis orinocensis has code 268082,
Myleus rubripinnis 270401 and Myleus cf. tiete 270521on our stocklist.
Please note that we exclusively supply the wholesale trade.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
