Described from close to the city of Bogor, Jawa Barat (West Java) province on the island of Java, Indonesia, but currently considered widespread with recorded occurrences on Java, Sumatra, Borneo and mainland Peninsular Malaysia. Some populations exhibit lighter…

This species is among the most frequently-misidentified in the hobby, almost always being traded as P. kuhlii. However the latter is currently considered endemic to Java, from where commercial collections are almost unheard of, and has possibly never been seen in aquaria.

Among them it’s most similar to I. longicorpus and I. hugowolfeldi but can be distinguished by the following combination of characters: body patterning consisting of 9-13 dark vertical bars along the flanks plus a small dark spot at the base of the upper caudal-fin lobe; no black blotch or markings posterior to the operculum; reduced lamina circularis in males; interorbital width measures 14.7-17.8% o…

The fish in our images above were imported together don’t correspond to any of the described species of Pangio though they can be assigned to the P. kuhlii species group with a degree of certainty. Unfortunately the live appearance of P. kuhlii itself is a mystery to aquarists since it’s currently considered endemic to Java and may have never been seen in the hobby.

It appears that I. hugowolfeldi, I. longicorpus and I. yongdokensis form a biogeographic lineage distinct from I. koreensis and I. pumila, with the former group distributed to the south of the Taebaek and Noryeong moutnain ranges and the latter to the west. This is further evidenced by the fact that the lamina circularis in males of the southern gro…

All Iksookimia species are endemic to Korea, and I. pumila is known only from the Baek River drainage in south-western Korea where its presence has been undermined at some localities due to construction of a dam in the middle reaches of the river during the late 1990s. Type locality is ‘Paikchon stream at Sangso-myon, Puan-gun, Chollabuk-do, South Korea’.

The reservoir formed by the dam has also be…

It’s most easily told apart from K. brevifasciata, its only congener, by body patterning consisting of dark, vertical bars running along the dorso-ventral part of the body (vs. dark bars running alongside the midventral part of the body), lips with wrinkled surfaces (vs. smooth) and barbels short (vs. long).

Among them it’s most similar to I. pumila which was initially described as a subspecies but is now considered distinct. The two are most easily-separated by colour pattern; I. koreensis has 10 or…

Some Sumatran and Bornean populations of the highly variable P. shelfordii superficially resemble P. piperata which can cause issues with identification as the two often occur together. In general however the body patterning in P. piperata is than that of P. shelfordii and they differ in vertebral counts (mode 47 vs. 50, respectively).

Patterning is highly variable depending both within and between populations and the species may comprise an assemblage containing a number of taxa (Kottelat and Lim, 1993; Tan and Kottelat, 2009). For example, those from Singapore and Johor possessing intricate mottling on the dorsal surface while individuals from Terengganu have a series of saddle-like markings either alternating or connecting with the midlateral markings.