An obligate dweller of shallow, fast-flowing, highly-oxygenated headwaters and minor tributaries characterised by stretches of riffles and runs broken up by pools or cascades in some cases.

Substrates are normally composed of smaller rocks, sand and gravel with jumbles of boulders, and whil…

Known only from a handful of localities within the Xi River (Xi Jiang) drainage in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China plus the Tuoniang river system in Funing County, southeastern Yunnan province.

Type locality is ‘West River, Longzhow Xian, Guangxi Province, China’.

There appears to be some discrepancy between Smith’s original description and Kottelat (1990) in that Smith states the fish is a member of a group of species lacking an ocellus at the upper caudal-fin base, whereas Kottelat mentions the presence of ‘a black spot at upper extremity of caudal-fin base, surrounded by a whitish area’.

Should not prove difficult to maintain under the correct conditions. We strongly recommend keeping it in a tank designed to resemble a flowing stream or river with a substrate of variably-sized rocks, sand, fine gravel, and some water-worn boulders.

This can be further furnished wit…

Most importantly the water must be clean and well-oxygenated so we suggest the use of an over-sized filter as a minimum requirement.

Turnover should ideally be 10-15 times per hour so additional powerheads, airstones, etc. should also be employed as necessary.

Base substr…

This fish remains in need of identification, and we’ve chosen to list unidentified members of the genus using an ‘ER’ numbering system in the absence of definitive information.

It’s quite easy to distinguish from congeners since it’s the only species known to possess a colour pattern comprising a dark base colour and series of thin, paler vertical bars on the body and similarly-coloured spots on the head.

It’s known from five caves in total, the others being Tham Huet, Tham Ban Louk Kow Larm, Tham Nong Pha Cham, and Tham Mae Lana.

Streams flowing from these caves drain into the Nam Lang and Nam Khong rivers of the Salween drainage system, and the two easternmost caves, Tham Huet and Tham Nong Pha Cham, are both tributaries of the former.

This species is sometimes traded for aquaria but its name also appears to have been widely misapplied to other fishes.

It can be identified via the following combination of characters: presence of 8-10 quite regular dark bars…

It’s been considered a synonym of Schistura caudofurca (Mai, 1978) by the majority of recent authors following Kottelat (2001) but this appears to be a case of misidentification since the two species exhibit several notable differences based on their respective descriptions (Endruweit, 2010).

The type locality consisted of remnant ephemeral pools in otherwise dry agricultural land, and many adults were collected from such habitats.

Other species present included the congener L. hasselti plus members of Anabas, ‘Puntius‘, Rasbora, Channa, and Hampala.