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Re: SAEs and such

> Takashi Amano states in his first book that the "siamese flying fox"
> is crosscheilis siamensis.

> Naturally there doesn't seem to be any pet stores local to me that
> have the foggiest idea of what one is, or worse yet they walk me over
> to the chinese algae eaters.

George B. >>See if they can get Simamese Flying Foxes from their wholesalers. 

Actually, you can.  Let me try explaining.
I thought it would be relatively simple to get SAEs in Singapore (that's where 
I am) since we are only about 600 miles south of the Thai border but that's not 
true.  None of the local fish shops stock this fish, however, there are lots of 
Flying Foxes and Chinese Algae eaters.  Armed with the article from AGA found 
at the Krib and the identification charts, I went down to the local wholesalers 
who ship fish out from Singapore to you chaps in the states.

I visited about 6 wholesalers, none had this fish in stock.  Instead they 
showed me the Chinese Algae Eater (identifiable with the large sucker mouth) or 
Flying foxes.  Now of the flying foxes available (we call in Fei Hu in Chinese 
which literally means Flying Fox), they showed me tanks and tanks of them.  You 
can either get the Indonesian variety ( In-do-ne Fei Hu) or the Siamese variety 
(Thai-kwok Fei Hu).  Apparently, the Siamese variety is the more striking one 
with the gold band above the black stripe being prominant after adult-hood and 
able to grow to 3 inches, however, the Indonesian variety grows smaller and is 
not so prominent.  (Hence, the confusion).

Now, back to SAEs.  I showed the wholesalers the article and they didn't have 
the fish!!  However, one enterprising owner said, I've seen that fish before - 
how many do you want?  I said twenty, and he said maybe I can get you ten.  He 
took a big net and walked up to the Flying Fox holding tanks and started 
scooping up fish, with a small bowl (about 2inches) he picked out 2 fish, 
walked to the next tank and again got about 4.  At the end, I had 10 fish from 
4 tanks, each holding about 500-600 flying foxes (don't know which variety).

When I got the fish home, and under close inspection, from the 10, I have 2 
siamese flying foxes (blah!!), 4 false siameneses (same family as SAEs but 
having 4 barbels instead of 2) and 4 SAEs!  But the funny thing is that when I 
quarantined all 10 of the fish, all 10 ate algae - green, brush, black and red!!

So there,  that's my 2 cents worth,

Rodney Dorville