#Ropefish

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

Dropped some of their favorite food in one corner. ^^

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #561

Reedfish!

Their larvae have external gills, making them resemble salamander larvae. Due to their elongated bodies, their movements are very snakelike as they swim close to the bottom of their habitat.

[deathmoth-blog]

The reedfish, ropefish (more commonly used in the United States), or snakefish, Erpetoichthys calabaricus, is a species of fish in the family Polypteridae alongside the bichirs. It is the only member of the genus Erpetoichthys. It is native to fresh and brackish waters in West and Central Africa. The reedfish possesses a pair of lungs in addition to gills, allowing it to survive in very oxygen-poor water. It is threatened by habitat loss through palm oil plantations, other agriculture, deforestation, and urban development.

The largest confirmed reedfish museum specimen was 37 cm (15 in) long, and three studies where more than 2,000 wild reedfish were caught (using basket traps, meaning that only individuals longer than 15–20 cm [6–8 in] were retained) found none that exceeded 41.4 cm (16.3 in). Although sometimes claimed to reach up to 90 cm (3 ft) long, this is incorrect.

Body elongation in fishes, such as eels, usually happens through the addition of caudal (tail) vertebrae, but in bichirs it has happened through the addition of precaudal vertebrae. Reedfish have evolved a more snakelike body by having twice as many precaudal vertebrae as the members of its sister genus Polypterus, despite having the same number of tail vertebrae. Pelvic fins are absent, and the long dorsal fin consist of a series of well-separated spines, each supporting one or several articulated rays and a membrane. The reedfish possesses a pair of lungs, enabling it to breathe atmospheric air. This allows the species to survive in water with low dissolved oxygen content and to survive for an intermediate amount of time out of water. The sexes are very similar in both median and maximum length, but females average heavier than males of a similar length, and they can be reliably separated by the shape of their anal fin. Reedfish are dark above and on the sides, with lighter orangish or yellowish underparts. Males are generally more olive-green in colour, whereas females generally are more yellowish-brown. Larvae have conspicuous external gills, making them resemble salamander larvae.

The genus name derives from the Greek words erpeton (creeping thing) and ichthys (fish).

[bestanimal]

I must submit some of my scaly babies for the vote.

My 10 year old plecostomus Snowflake I got him in middle school and he’s 18 inches long. Pleco’s are armored catfish and can actually walk some on land (I’ve seen in experiments but never tested it with Snowflake obviously.) My old boy actually wasn’t very friendly until he turned 8 then he came out of hiding and earlier this year started taking food from my hand. He also discovered he likes to be petted.

Nessie is an African ropefish, she has a turtle dock and stopped jumping once I got it for her. Ropefish are cousins of Bichir, normally nocturnal and actually come on shore at night to hunt slithering like a snake. Nessie loves attention and pets But will try to bite my mom 😂 she’s not happy and calls favoritism.

My last entry of oddball fish are Mexican eyeless/blind tetra. Some tetra retain small undersized and I working eyes as a recessive trait while the rest reabsorb their eyes. Two of my male cave tetra retained their eyes Ozark and GreyEyes. My other three, Linville and Cryptotora (my two girls) and the second biggest male Tinaja do not have eyes. Even without eyes that doesn’t mean they can’t see, they use a combo of things including a specialized lateral line that can sense water pressure changes, a system of photographic memory to memorize and mentally map out their environment, and they have a gland on top of their brain that can still sense light. They also communicate verbally with a series of clicks and in the wild they have developed shoal and cavern specific accents. These guys will eat anything and see the world with their mouths so they should only be kept with each other.

Feesh!

[aqua-dan]

I miss aquarium keeping as a hobby so bad sometimes 😔 As soon as I have the means/shelf space for fishkeeping again, you better believe I'm going to have the funkiest little guys

[laudofthedeep]

4, 14 and 17! :)

Oh my god, apparently I somehow saved this as a draft instead of posting it? Unintentional, but also this is so long I refuse to proofread it before posting. Sorry to the brave anon who sent this. I saw it, I’m just also an idiot.

4. Oh okay no I see what happened, I forgot what this question was and saved as a draft to go get the actual question but then I got distracted. I think the question was like…bucket list aquariums or something?

The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta! It’s one of the biggest in the world, and one of a small number to keep whale sharks! Also the Aquarium of Western Australia in Perth for reasons I’ll explain while answering 14.

Honorable mentions to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which seems neat and heavily involved in conservation, and the Osaka Aquarium, which is both convenient and another of the few places to keep whale sharks but which I’m more cautious about due to Japan’s…lax perspective on animal ethics.

Incidentally, I’m not a particular fan of whale sharks (at least not any more than any other aquatic animal; they’re still neat) but an aquarium being able to keep them for several years indicates both an understanding of and a budget for keeping other aquatic life well.

14. What was an important, defining moment you’ve had with fish/aquatic animals?

I don’t feel like I had a specific important moment; rather, a lot of specific media gradually built together into an abiding passion for aquatic life.

There was something in the water in the early 2010s. There were four things that really stoked my passion for Fish.

The thing that really catalyzed it was Endless Ocean: Blue World, which is pretty much Fish: The Game. It was gorgeous (for its time) and did a good job introducing me to fish that weren’t typical aquarium fish (too bright, too same) or sharks (cool, I guess, but too sensational). As it turns out, there are all kinds of fish and they do all kinds of things. I particularly liked learning about deep sea stuff and still do because I like The Unknown.

Around the same time, I started watching River Monsters. I caught a bit of it on TV and fell in love. It had fish I recognized from Endless Ocean and it was (mostly) about being informational and scientific while still being narratively entertaining. At that time around me, fish were considered a hobby of rednecks (there was a lot of television about fishing that was very redneck, and I lived in an area that was decidedly Not Redneck) or the rich (who would go out on yachts and fish for billfish; these are who I lived around), and it was nice to see a television show that felt like it was for me and my interests.

Not too long after, Animal Crossing: New Leaf came out. Animal Crossing is many things, but to me it is a collector’s game. In that I use it almost exclusively as a fishing simulator, because that game is charming and it has Cool Fish and you can decorate your house with Cool Fish. This is self-explanatory.

But the most important one. The foundation. The godfather. Zoo Tycoon 2. I was just talking about that game with a friend the other night, and it was truly a boon for animal nerds everywhere. That game had a community that simply couldn’t exist these days. Both online and gaming culture have changed too much. Let me explain. Zoo Tycoon 2 was a pretty good game. Nothing groundbreaking. But. It had a format and source code that made it PRIME for modding. And so mod the world did. There were several forums in its glory days, and mods ranged in ability from “I took the base aardvark and made it red” to “I have lovingly rendered the world’s largest sauropod, adding several unique animations and behaviors and several hundred polygons”. And in these days, the internet would support you either way. Or at least the ZT2 community would. I can’t remember seeing a single disparaging post about something someone had created. There was one creator in particular (well, two, they were a team), Zeta Designs, who consistently made great stuff. Although I can’t find it anymore, they at one point embarked on a 1:1 recreation of the Perth Aquarium, creating new designs as necessary to reconstruct it. This right here is why I started getting interested in aquariums, and that’s what led me into the rest.

17. Do you keep an aquarium or an outside pond? If so, what animals (or lack thereof) do you keep?

I no longer do! I had to leave my aquarium behind when I moved to Japan, and that was very sad. I’d keep an aquarium now but my apartment won’t allow anything over five gallons. With that said, the aquarium I had was a 29 gallon with a pair of pearl gourami, a pair of ropefish, and some oto cats. I’d have wanted some more ropefish (they like friends) but I couldn’t afford a bigger tanks, so that was the best I could do. Actually, one of my proudest moments in fishkeeping was when I went to buy a new ropefish (one of them died during a terrible winter storm where my house lost power for a week, but it actually died in the fish daycare I sent it to because they have a nasty habit of jumping out of tanks and disappearing) and the fish store owner was like “I dunno kid, these guys are real hard to take care of and I’d hate to see see you coming back a week from now looking for another. How can I trust that you’ll be able to keep it alive?” And I was like. Uh. Well. I’ve kept a couple of them for three years now so I hope I’m good enough at keeping them alive. And the guy goes “Damn, three years? Arright buddy you’re golden, you’re better at keeping fish than 90% of my customers.” Dude got MUCH more talkative after that, I’m pretty sure I’d have been there for hours if my dad wasn’t waiting in the car.

[tei-to-tei]

the siren call of aquarium tanks is too loud to ignore

I can never stop adopting waterbois

My other cat princess <3

ARRKHRRGKGKAKFJFAK ANOTHER BBBYY??!? ✨💕✨

all my other children live in fish tanks, so here is a pic of my pufferfish son in exchange:

[salmonidscholar]

Favorite non salmon/salmon affiliated fish?

Gotta go with the bichirs n ropefish. They're a lovely little friend group of things that look like dinosaurs, and their skulls look like MUTOs and I think that's badass

[mod2amaryllis]

Do you have any fish that you dream about one day getting? For me it’s ropefish, gimme those lil snakes

ROPEFISH 🥺🥺🥺 MY LOVES...

i would die for a ropefish.... in the same vein the only monster fish that I've ever put in a heart shaped locket is a birchir. they're even among the smaller monster fish so they're not THAT unattainable, i say, foolishly, longingly (and before anyone gets irresponsible ideas when i say "smaller" i mean 1-2 feet minimum lol, still a monster)

then ever since having my kribs and seeing how cool and intelligent they are, the dream cichlid is a blood parrot AND I KNOW, THEY'RE ASSHOLES, but looooook at itttt.......wawer puppy.... I'd want one in its own big tank as a wet pet

but those are the highly unlikely gets, the top of my realistic wishlist is pretty stereotypical: pea puffers 🥹

they're a perfect mix of attainable + new challenge + omg omg omg cuuuute!!!!!!! it's honestly puffers in general that i desperately wanna try, large puffers are equally adorable to me... if I'm at an aquarium they're my number 2 after arapaima, i could watch a big puffer toot around for hours. they're so visibly intelligent it's amazing!

[metalgearemily]

my schools ropefish :)

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

He is beauty, he is grace, he gets punched in the face (by enthusiastic ropefish). Poor Sev, he's just floating around.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Using phylogeny to horribly warp the definition of a fish, my favourite fish is probably the binturong (Although all procyonids are also incredible). There's just something great about a mid-sized feliform with a semi-prehensile tail and a smell of popcorn about it. Plus they sometimes look like haggard old men and it's fantastic. Using fish to mean things people classically refer to as fish, I love polypterids (Bichir) etc. I love the fact some of them can move around on land, I love how basal they are to all the other ray finned fish (Nothing against other ray finned fish, there's just something charming about lonely branches on the tree of life to me), I love their shapes, I love the fact reedfish/ropefish look like they're smiling. I love the fact they (and everyone walking past) will side eye me if I baby talk them at my nearest aquarist. A tier fish, one day I will live in a place large enough to have one.

Fine tetrapod and true fish choices! Bichirs are cool fish indeed, I don’t think I appreciate them enough for just how cool they are; they even have lungs!! I’ll need to research them a bit more, it’s clear, and spread bichir joy in the world.

Binturong joy, too. Unappreciated animals deserve recognition! Plus they literally look like this:

If the Muskrat from the Moomins wasn’t already a, you know, muskrat…. He should’ve been this. 100%. Perfect nihilistic philosopher.

[crow-with-a-knife]

ITS A LITTLE LESS FUNNY WHEN YOU HAVE SHRIMP ON YOUR FLOOR WHO THEN JUMP AWAY WHEN YOU TRY AND PICK THEM UP AND PUT THEM BACK

NO ONE FUCKIN TOLD ME SHRIMP LIKE TO JUMP???

[tea-stained-tabby]

ive been wanting to ask this on your fish blog but asks are off there, what are your wildest dream fish? like if you could have any sized tanks without cost being an issue? for me its silver dollars and ropefish and pike cichlids with pearl cichlids . also hi :)

hi!! idk anything about cichlids other than that they're very pretty, so going off of that metric, great choices!! silver dollars and ropefish are awesome too!

for me it would *definitely* be betta unimaculata pair! i absolutely adore wild bettas and unimaculata are not a exception. i actually have a tank to put them in - but i can't do that until we move. it's a 75 gallon, and i plan on doing a paludarium type set up (with about 40 gallons of water space). i'd love to also have some dither fish in there, like some tetras or something similar, but unimaculata get so big they're liable to eat anything that fits in their mouth. but yeah, long and short, betta unimaculata!

i also really want kuhli loaches, they're absolutely adorable little goofballs and i love their little barbells.

a few others in no particular order are pearl gourami, trichopsis vittata, trichopsis schalleri (i'm a sucker for all three croaking gourami species), betta imbellis, and honey gourami. can you tell i really like labyrinth fish?

related, i would *love* to have my own business ethically breeding and selling bettas. preferably betta hendra, because i want to help with their conservation efforts and to keep people from buying wild caught. but i could also very easily settle for domestic bettas, as there's a very high demand for them already. i would focus on correct care and urge any buyers to educate themselves on the fish they want. if i were to ever have a store front, all of my display fish would be in their own decently sized holding tanks, preferably with unique aquascapes in each! the unique scapes would get people thinking of ideas for their own tanks at home! i just love bettas a lot and i genuinely want to dedicate my life to them :))

sorry for the long winded answer! i hope you got what you were looking for! thanks for the ask :))

[floridafishkeeper]

A group of my favorite fish, bucktooth tetra, polleni cichlid, ropefish, delhezi bichir

[tauforged]

OH! i forgot to post the new friends i got today from the bone guy at the antiques fair :3

a possum and a mink! they also had a gorgeous python skull but it was 300$ and i simply couldn’t swing that, even though i wanted her so badly… someday. someday.

the mink was little enough that he found some space on my oddities shelf! he’s hanging out on top of the ropefish jar. the possum is a bit bigger, so he’s hanging out on a different shelf for now until i find a proper home for all my bones to be in one place.

and for those who were asking - here’s boris! my gigantic baby boy who i am afraid of. he’s an incomplete boar skull that i got for like 20$ on ebay and degreased and bleached myself <3 he’d already seen better days by the time he got here (you should have SEEN how dirty he was) but i really do love him. even though he’s so heavy that he’s broken several shelves by now.

the other skull up there with him is my coyote skull, in her mouth is a random seabird bone i found on the beach years ago and tried my best to clean up. the yote isn’t my find though, she was a gift - i think she was from skullsunlimited? i forgor tbh. she was my first skull. my baby girl