This week we received a good number of the interesting frogmouth catfishes of the species Chaca bankanensis from Sumatra. In contrast to the rather reddish animals we could import earlier (https://www.aquariumglaser.de/en/fish-archives/chaca_bankanensis_en/), this time they are rather brown-black colored, probably an origin-related color characteristic.
Very interesting is that some animals have striking white colored eyes. At first we thought of a mechanical injury or a parasite, but both do not seem to apply, because in all corresponding animals both eyes are equally affected. In the macrophotography we can also see well that only the upper half of the iris is white, the pupil and the lower half of the iris, however, are sharply demarcated. Presumably this is a characteristic that sexually active males show, this seems to us at least the most plausible explanation of the phenomenon. Externally recognizable sexual characteristics are not yet known with certainty in Chaca, but in the top view of a presumed pair one recognizes quite well the possible sex differences (head width, ventral fins).
For our customers: the animals have code 408253 on our stocklist. Please note that we only supply wholesale.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
