This species can be distinguished from congeners inhabiting the Red River basin in Yunnan province, China, by the following combination of characters: no barbels; 46-52 lateral line scales; 16 circumpeduncular scales; pharyngeal teeth in 3 rows, 2.4.5-5.4.2; snout rounded, no secondary rostrum, no longitudinal…

No bubble nest is built and several thousand eggs simply float at the surface with both male and female remaining to defend the eggs and fry.

The eggs hatch after 24-36 hours depending on temperature and the fry are free swimming in a further 24 hours. At this point they resemble 6-7 mm long black tadpoles.

It is important to constantly feed…

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.

M. ocellatus can be distinguished from congeners by the following combination of characters: caudal-fin rounded; eye stripe not connecting spot on posterior projection of opercle with eye; dorsal-fin rays filamentous posterior to a vertical through the posterior anal-fin rays in adults; 16-19 spinous dorsal-fin rays; 6-13 rakers on ceratobranchial of first gill arch; posterior tip or margin of body scales not darker than scales.