For starters the photo of wanamensis featured on my homepage is of a wild
caught specimen that Neil Armstrong got from Barry Crockford.
Barry brought the original live specimens to Australia in 1979. Only five
survived, which included only 1 female. A year later further live specimens
were collected but again only one female survived. This small captive
population formed the basis of all the Australian stock. I think Barry lost
all his wanamensis in the bush fire that burnt his house down. As far as I
know Neil never distributed any until 1983 and the only people to get any
were Lorrie Lee and another fellow in Melbourne whom I cant remember at a
moment. Lorrie obtained all the stock that Neil had left and later when Neil
visited him he had both multisquamatus and wanamensis breeding together in
the same tank and was distributing the fry to everyone. Ron Bowman as far as
I know never got his stock from Neil or Barry so at this time I cant comment
on his stock. Of note here is that Lorrie Lee was also the source of all
multisquamatus in Australia as well and both stocks were possibly
contaminated right from the beginning?????
I'll have to talk to Neil again and see if he remembers the full story.
I would consider all multisquamatus and wanamensis in Australia are suspect
except for the new red-eyed type recently collected by Heiko. However if
Heiko collected the original stocks of wanamensis and multisquamatus that
are in Europe then they should be OK?
As a finally note I have never seen any wanamensis that looked like the
original fish that Neil had in 1982. Even the fish I saw in Europe didn't
look like the original fish.
Adrian.
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Adrian R. Tappin
"Home of the Rainbowfish"
http://www.ecn.net.au/~atappin/home.htm
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