The ventral and anal fins eventually become bluish and the animal continues to grow to the typical size of a male. At the time of this writing, one of the fish has almost lost all the red color in the anal fin and the ventral fins are becoming very pale. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next several months. Our B. cupido , which were collected in the same place as the C. punctulatum , may all be males. It has been reposed that the blue markings on the snout and under the eye differentiate the sexes.
Males have lines and females, small spots.
Aquarists having experiences with Biotodoma suggest this sexual dichromatic characteristic may not apply to all populations or species of Biotodoma . In any event, we plan to keep the fish with the intention of breeding them, if possible. Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Paul Loiselle, Jeff Cardwell, Wayne S. Leibel, Lee Finley and Jim Forshey for their valuable advice. Second, I would like to thank the other members of the trip for making it such a memorable experience. My sincerest thanks to Christine Fritzsche for lending me her camera and Lisa Mclntosh for financially supporting the remainder of my trip.