The marbled headstander is perhaps the most unusual of all headstanders. This beautiful fish grows to about 15-20 cm in length and is hard to mistake because of its high body shape. There is only a second Abramites species, A. eques, but it has never been imported alive. It lives exclusively in the Rio Magdalena in Colombia. All live photos known to us, which are supposed to show A. eques, are in reality color variants of A. hypselonotus. In A. eques there is no stripe on the anterior body, the first bandage starts only below the dorsal fin and runs over the middle of the body.
In the extremely widespread Abramites hypselonotus – it exists practically in the whole of South America east of the Andes, from Argentina to Venezuela – the stripes start directly behind the head. Thereby, at least in wild collected ones, each animal is individually recognizable by its stripe pattern. One has to doubt that the marbled headstander is really the same species everywhere in this vast area, but they look very, very similar.
Mostly we have offspring of this fish from Indonesia in our stock, but occasionally we receive wild catches. The fish currently swimming with us are from Peru.
Abramites are social animals that interact constantly. If you have too few animals, this can become a nuisance, but in larger groups and large aquariums this is not so noticeable. Unfortunately, these beautiful fish are extreme herbivores.
For our customers: the animals have code 200503 on our stoclist. Please note that we only supply wholesale.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
