Potomotyphlus kaupii

Thanks Ben. Soft water is hard to come by in these parts (pun intended)

Know what you mean i'm using RO water filtered through a softening resin, the beech leaves do the rest.

Paris, had a quick search for info and herpetologist Bill Lamar has them on his list of amphibs in the Loreto region of peru and since the wholesaler was also selling wild type Loreto tetras from the same shipment it seems to point to Loreto Peru. As a side topic the Rio loreto is known as a brown river due to it's murky nature so particularly suited to Caecilians!

Hmm, I need to get that reference by Lamar as the info I have doesn't list them from Peru (or even that close).
Well, being known as a brown river doesn't help as the water could be discolored due to sediment suspension (which is known from several of the rivers in the Amazon Basin) as opposed to black water (tannin) darkened streams.
If I rememeber correctly Potomotyphlops kauperi and T. natans are found sympatrically in a couple of river systems.
The pH doesn't have to be that low (even T. natans for example is known to come from stream systems that drop to a pH of below 5 in the dry system) as a pH of around 6.5 works well.

Alan, if you have access to a RO or distilled water system they are pretty easy to keep. (In a pinch you can even use the peat systems used for discus to soften and acidify the water).

Ed

Ed heres the web page i found the Bill Lamar checklist (http://www.greentracks.com/AmphList.html) not conclusive but a possibility, also i took a visit to the wholesalers and spoke the the fish house guy who told me they came in labelled as a species of cichlid and the shipper thinks they must have got boxes mixed up! anyways i've sent an email to the OFI(Ornamental fish international)to explain the unlawful trade in caecilians by some of their members, as yet no reply.
Ben

Hi Ben,
Thanks for the link. I will check it out. It is possible that the caecilians are coming in as a undescribed "eel". This is how T. natans was imported and is still occasionally imported illegally into the USA. As not all shipments are inspected, there are still some animals coming into the states.

Ed

(Message edited by Ed on January 23, 2005)

Hi Ben,
Did you see that the checklist is for a 500 km radius from Iquitos?
Glancing at an Atlas puts the outer edge of that pretty far into Brazil maybe I should e-mail and ask for localities.....

Ed

Frost's Amphibian Species of the World has them listed as being in the Orinoco River drainage system, but doesn't specifically list countries.

http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/references.php?id=24608

..so,fully aquatic like the t natans...so live bearers too?

Yes, Potomotyphlus (along with all other members of the Caecilidae) are livebearing, most caecilians are in fact. Only a few Asian genera, such as Ichthyophis, are oviparous.

Except that Caecilia orientalis (Ecuador) is an egg layer.
See Funk, W. Chris; Fletcher-Lazo, George; Nogales-Sornosa, Fernando; Ameida-Reinoso, Diego; 2004; First description of a clutch and nest site for the genus Caecilia (Gymnophiona: Caeciliidae); Herpetological Review 35(2): 128-130.

In general, within the genus Caecilia, it looks as if there are both oviparous as well as viviparous animals so I personally do not believe that oviparity is mainly restricted to some of the Asian genera.

Ed

Thanks for the correction, Ed. I was unaware of any oviparous caecilians outside of the Ichthyophidae. I'll have to check out that article.