This species is not well known and rarely traded for the aquarium hobby.

Unfortunately diagnostic characters cannot be provided since we’ve been unable to obtain the type description, and little has been written about this species since it was published. It looks very similar to several congeners, particularly C. acrensis and C. cruziensis.

C. brevirostris was described from an aquarium specimen apparently exported from the Río Orinoco drainage in Venezuela, and its wider distribution is somewhat vague, usually being given as the Orinoco system plus unnamed coastal rivers in Suriname.

This represents a somewhat disjunct pattern of distribution and if correct the species is also likely to occur in Guyana.

Fish collected in the upper rio Maderia basin in Brazil and Bolivia have been traded under the invented names C. sp. ‘dorsalis’ and C. sp. ‘ogawae’ in the past, although are officially-considered conspecific with C. armatus.

This appears to warrant investigation since the Río Huallaga in Peru, type locality of C. armatus, and collection localities in the upper Madeira are separated by a straight-line distance of almost 2500 km.

This species is sometimes confused any of several similar-looking fishes such as C. sychri or C. sp. C097.

While the former is a more elongate fish with a longer snout and quite easy to identify, C097 resembles C. atropersonatus more closely, despite being traded as C. sychri ‘longnose’. Its snout is longer than that of C. atropersonatus but shorter than that of C. sychri, and the dark spots on the body tend to be more well-defined and spaced out than in the other two.

Type locality is ‘Río Yuruari, 3 kilometers east of El Callao, 7°18’N, 61°50’W, Bolivar, Venezuela’, and this species is also known from the Rupununi River drianage in Guyana and the Courantyne/Corantijn system in Suriname.

The Yuruari, an affluent of the Río Cuyuni, an…

Described from the Río Ampiyacu, a small tributary draining into the main Amazon channel in Loreto Department, northeastern Peru, with additional records from the Yavarí (Javari), Napo, Nanay, and lower Ucayali drainage basins.

All of these are Amazon tributaries, and C. ambiacus appears to occur in most or all affluents of the main Amazon channel between th…

This species is sometimes referred to as ‘false corydoras’ or ‘sixray corydoras’.

A. pauciradiatus can be distinguished from congeners by possession of 6 soft dorsal-fin rays, as opposed to 7 in other Aspidoras species, plus its distinctive colour pattern.

Aspidoras species are distinguished from the very…

This species was previously referred to as M. thoracata, but that name is now applied to the species with a relatively short dorsal-fin spine which was formerly known as M. personata.

M. picta can be told apart from M. thoracata by presence of a dark vertical bar in the caudal-fin, a comparatively longer dorsal-fin spine (52.0-64.0% vs. 32.0-48.0% of dorsal-fin base in specimens measur…

Known from the Ucayali (río Samiria), Huallaga, Santiago, and Pastaza (ríos Bobonaza and Pindo) river systems in eastern Ecuador and northern Peru. These are all tributary drainages within the middle Río Marañón watershed, a major affluent of the upper Amazon river basin.

Type locality is ‘Río Hallagua system, Yurimaguas…

The broad dark stripe in the dorsal portion of the body extends into the ventral portion on the caudal peduncle, and this character can be used to distinguish it from the very similar-looking C. zygatus, with which it is often confused. In C. zygatus the dark stripe does not extend ventrally on the caudal peduncle and is present only on the dorsal part.