A single male of the Tequila Splitfin was sampled in 1955 by Miller and Greenbank, but identified erroneously as Zoogoneticus quitzeoensis, with which species it was collected and found sympatrically . Many years later, the mistake was detected, the fish identified as a new species and finally, 43 years after the first capture, described by Webb and Miller.

In 2001, a wild population of this species was rediscovered in a very small spring pool (3 x 4m in diameter). The population there was composed of only a handful of adult fish and a few tens of juveniles (De la Vega-Salazar et al., 2003). In 2007, N. W. Bailey et al showed, that the allelic richness of this population (though it was comparable in size to an aquatic stock) was higher than in any aquatic stock. In 2013 the loss of this population was reported (pers. comm. Domínguez), so there is not much hope that this species is still persisting in the wild.