Likely to prey on insects and other small invertebrates/zooplankton in nature. Captive fish will normally accept dried products once they’re recognised as edible, but should be offered plenty of small live or frozen foods such as Daphnia, Artemia or bloodworm regularly to ensure development of optimal colour and condition.

Small insects such as crickets or Drosophila fru…

This species is traded under various names including 'chocolate scissor-tailed loach', chocolate long-finned loach', 'red line cobra loach', 'spiny eel loach' and 'dragon loach'. It's apparently difficult to find in its natural habitats and thus time-consuming to collect, meaning it's rarely traded in numbers, sought after by enthusiasts and tends to carry a relatively high price tag when available.

The genus currently contains just three…

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.

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…

It’s a member of the N. selangoricus group of species within the genus, an assemblage first recognised by Hadiaty and Kottelat (2009) and characterised by possession of two rows of horizontally-arran…

Images depict clear, tea-coloured forest streams with dense marginal vegetation and substrates of sand and/or small rocks and pebbles. It’s also known from environments with sandy substrate and organic debris in the form of submerged roots/branches and le…

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.

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).

One of a handful of Pangio spp. traded under the generic name ‘eel loach’, though it’s most commonly available as bycatch among shipments of other fishes. Some authors have suggested it may be synonymous with P. anguillaris bu…

The genus Kottelatlimia was erected by Nalbant (1994) to accommodate K. katik which had previously been assigned to Lepidocephalichthys but differs in various aspects noted earlier by Kottelat and Lim (1992) including: relatively small adult size; scaleless…