Known from the from the Red River in northern Vietnam and Yunnan province, southern China, plus the Thái Bình, Sông Kỳ Cùng, Mã and Lam rivers in Vietnam and possibly the Nam Xam and Nam Ma drainages in Laos.

Type locality is ‘Market in Hanoi, Vietnam’.

This species appears to exist in a number of different forms which exhibit differences in colour pattern, morphology, or both, and it’s currently unclear whether all of them are truly conspecific or not although to avoid confusion we list all together here.

It’s been considered a synonym of Schistura caudofurca (Mai, 1978) by the majority of recent authors following Kottelat (2001) but this appears to be a case of misidentification since the two species exhibit several notable differences based on their respective descriptions (Endruweit, 2010).

At the type locality of the congener S. lixianjiangensis sympatric species included Balitora kwangsiensis, Glyptothorax quadriocellatus, Garra orientalis, Hemibagrus pluriradtus, Poropuntius huangchieni, Pseudecheneis paviei,…

Type locality is given as ‘Babianjiang River, 24°20’N, 100°10’E, Jingdong County, Yunnan Province, China’. The Babianjiang joins the Mengyejiang River to form the Langmajiang River, a tributary of the Lixianjiang (Black River) within the Red River basin.