The vernacular name ‘lancer’ is derived from the extended dorsal spine possessed by several members of the genus, which currently contains 7 species. B. obscurus is diagnosable from congerners by the following combination of characters: mouth opening relatively small and narrow; oral dentition significantly reduced; dorsal-fin spi…

Commonly known as ‘Japanese rice fish’ or simply ‘rice fish’, O. latipes is well-known to science having been widely used as a model organism in genomic and experimental biology for well over a century and was the first vertebrate animal to mate in space during the mid-1990s.

It’s also been a popular aquarium fish for many years, though is less widely-available than it once was, with the ornamental ‘gold’ vari…

This species was initially described as a member of Cobitis and remained as such for over 60 years until being redescribed in the new genus Microcobitis by Bohlen and Harant (2011). It can be separated from Cobitis species by a number of char…

This species appeared in the trade during 2010 and its identity has been confirmed to us by Thai exporter and aquarist Kamphol Udomritthiruj who collects it from the Se Kong system for the aquarium hobby. To date only subadult specimens have reached the western market.

This fish first became available in early 2009 and was initially identified as S. breviventralis (Freyhof and Serov, 2000).

However it cannot be that species because there is no discernible gap between pelvic and anal fins, which also discounts the possibility of it being S. elongata (Roberts, 1998). It therefore remains unidentified and is often imported in mixed batches with S. sp. ‘SEW02’, which it also resembles closely.

This is one of the more readily-available members of the genus and popularly referred to as S. sp. 'spotted' or S. sp. 'special'. It's superficially similar in appearance to S. albisuera but in that species body patterning consists of a network of irregular dark lines forming a complicated series of reticulations vs. many small, light spots on a dark background in S. sp. 'SEW01'.

It's been suggested that these two may represent the same species but this…

This species first became available in early 2009 and was initially identified as S. breviventralis (Freyhof and Serov, 2000) because there is a clear space between the pelvic and anal fins and body patterning is vaguely similar to that species, and also appears quite similar to S. elongata (Roberts, 1998) and S. sp. ‘SEW03’.

It does not fully match the original descriptions of either, however, and therefore remains in need of identification.

This species first became available in early 2010 and sometimes appears on trade lists under the vernacular names 'Laos sucker' or 'Laos Sakura sucker'.

It's distinguishable from other members of the genus by the following combination of characters: body spotted and without stripes; no concentric bands on paired fins; origin of pelvic-fin below origin of dorsal-fin; origin of pectoral-fin posterior to corner of mouth; pelvic fin reaching origin of anal fin; small elevated …

S. lineolata was first recorded by Diard over 150 years prior to its 'rediscovery' in the early-1990s. It became available to the aquarium trade in the mid-2000s and swiftly established itself as one of the more popular balitorids in the hobby due to its attractive body markings and ease of breeding. It's also sold under the names 'reticulated hillstream loach', 'Vietnamese hillstream loach' and 'gold ring butterfly sucker'.

It's difficult to…

It’s been suggested that these two may represent the same species but this appears not to be the case. When describing S. albisuera Freyhof (2003) used a series of specimens collected in 2000 plus some larger, spotted fish which had been collected in 1999 and preserved in New York. Although he noticed differences in dorsal patterning between the two series these weren’t considered sufficient to s…