S. pappaterra is relatively rare in the ornamental trade and much sought after by enthusiasts.

It is easily distinguished from all known congeners by presence of a series of prominent black blotches beneath the dorsal-fin, plus a well-defined dark band extending along the side of the body. In recent genetic analyses its genetic distinctness was strongly supported, with S. jurupari and S. leucosticta its closest relatives.

Widely-distributed throughout much of the Paraná and Uruguay river systems in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.

Some records from Buenos Aires province, Argentina are now considered to refer to the congener H. togoi (Miquelarena and López, 2006) so the common vernacular name ‘Buenos Aires tetra’ may not…

Generally peaceful making it an ideal resident of the well-researched community aquarium.

It is perhaps best-maintained alongside similarly-sized characids, gasteropelecids, lebiasinids, smaller callichthyid or loricariid catfishes and non-predatory, medium-sized cichlids.

Try to buy a mixed-sex group of at least 8-10 specimens, incl…

Its native rivers flow through one of the most densely-populated and industrialised parts of Brazil, and have suffered greatly from dam construction, water abstraction, pollution, introduced species (including over 40 exotic freshwater fishes in the rio Paraíba do Sul alone), and other forms of anthropogenic degradation. H. flammeus is now uncommon or even extinct across much of its putative natural range, and in Rio de Janeiro state only a handful of highly-fragmented populations remain at best, with the mo…

Despite the ubiquity of its name in aquarium literature, confusion surrounds its true identity. Given it’s the only member of the genus occurring on the island, fish from Trinidad do presumably represent C. aeneus (see our image), but the classification of those from other localities appears far from certain.

Today the species is accepted to occur throughout much of South America, and indeed similarly-patterned fish do occur across a large portion of the continent. Some of these, such as the gree…