A. panduro ID

[IDMiamiBob <IDMiamiBob@aol.com>]

I have some fish I recently received from Tom Wilkins in Chico, CA that are
supposed to be pandurinis.  Part of me says he knows what he's talking about,
but after looking at pictures and descriptions at the Krib and Dave Soares'
site, another part is aying maybe he got a bum steer on the ID.  Let me
discribe these guys and see if y'all can confirm or deny that these are
pandurinis. (No offense, Tom, please, but it's easy to get these things mixed
up)

My males have bright yellow pectoral fins the whole length.  There is a spot
at the caudal peduncal, but it is not a triangle.  It sort of indistinctly
starts forward of the peduncle and runs back through about half the tail,
where it fans out and fades to the back.  This stripe is fully as wide as the
caudal peduncle.  The smaller males have a small lateral spot that comes and
goes.  The dorsal fin is lighter than sky-blue in the front, but develops to a
yellow-orange at the anterior end.  The same light blue shows up as tiny
specks on the back edge of each scale on the upper half of the torso.

The caudal fin is rounded, as consistent with the nijsenni complex.  It is
edged in red-orange, and the rest of it that is not black from the afore-
mentioned spot is the same light blue as the forward dorsal.

The females have a heavy cheek-stripe that seemingly flares from the eye down
to the base of the gill slit, then wrap around the underside into each other.
There is a black blotch starting just behind the ventral fins that is slightly
different on each of the females.  It runs all the way around the belly and
into the ventrals.  On some females it has three "high spots", the third one
being the highest, rising above the center of the body.  This third section is
in the typical lateral spot location.  Other females, there are two splotches,
split by a thin section of background dull-beige.  The tips of the ventral
fins are yellow.  The edging on the tail is faintly visible.  The first three
dorsal rays and lower half of the fourth are black, with this black extending
down briefly into the top of the body.  The rest of the unpaired fins tend
toward bright lemon-yellow.

My water has some really tough buffering capacity.  I have managed to drive
the pH down to just below 7.0 and one male and one female have staked out the
majority of my 20-long, keeping five others at bay.  She is showing definite
pairing/spawning tendencies.  She has not yellowed out completely like my
cacatuoides or any of the other Apistos I have kept, but the yellow in her
fins is really bright.  I am working the pH down, and monitoring to see where
I get the spawning at.

Your help is appreciated.

Bob Dixon