Inpaichthys kerri “Super Blue”

18. November 2020

There is a nice story about the discovery of the king tetra, which we don’t know if it’s true, but it’s worth telling: In the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus, Brazil, aquatic plants were kept in an aquarium. Fish were actually not in it. But suddenly, as if from nowhere, cute baby fish, apparently characins, appeared. When the animals had grown up, they fascinated by the bright blue color of the males. Moreover, it turned out to be a genus and species not yet known to science. So, one moved into the area, in which the water-plants had been collected, because obviously the fish had come as eggs, attached to the water-plants, into the aquarium. In the north of the federal state of Mato Grosso, in the Rio Aripuanã (a tributary of the upper Rio Madeira) they found what they were looking for. The genus was then described in honor of the institute: Inpaichthys, i.e. fish of the INPA. The species name kerri honors the then director of the institute, Warwick Estevam Kerr.

The king tetra is a very pretty, small (3-4 cm) tetra. In the wild type, only the male becomes blue in the back. The females (recognizable by the red adipose fin, that is blue with the male) have a beige-brown back in the wild type. Super Blue does not only turn blue earlier than the wild form (already at about 2 cm), but also the females get a blue back.

For our customers: the Super Blue has code 264722 on our stocklist Please note that we only supply the wholesale trade.