Armando's Collection

I had been breeding the few local phenotypes of ELB for a several years when Armando Pou sent me some of the fish he collected in the wild. The fish above was one of these and was a successful breeder and passed the purple spot at the base of the dorsal fin to its progeny. The following are pictures of two of those progeny.

As you can see, the phenotype is clearly a mix from the first fish above and other phenotypes. In fact, if you draw a 30 degree line from in front of the dorsal fin down and toward the tail, the entire rear section is almost identical in all three fishes. Also, the front colors are very similar. The fish on the right above has more orange spots in the body area giving it a more broken pattern.

I discovered these fish in Laguna de Patos, near Cumana, northeastern Venezuela in 1975.  They had in fact been collected in 1937 by Franklyn F. Bond, but I didn't know that at the time.  . . They were found in warm (27-30 degrees C) bright green and hard water in a small lake. . .The original stock was much more polymorphic variable than the present one in the aquarium trade. . .
    "Endler's Poecilia" got into the Aquarium trade via Klaus Kallman of the New York Aquarium, who got it from the late Donn Eric Rosen, the major taxonomic expert of the Poeciliidae, to whom I gave it so that he could name it.  Unfortunately he died before naming it.  Klaus gave it to aquarists and added the present common name ("Endler's Livebearer" or "Endler's Poecilia") with out telling me (as a surprise), and I first heard about it during a visit to England in the mid-1980's.  It was quite a surprise, but also a disappointment to see how much of the original color pattern variation has been lost through inbreeding and founder events.  The wild fish are not always "double swordtails", have much more variable color patterns, and some even have black pectoral fins.  But all have the lovely metallic green spots, though variable in size, shape, and position.  Although highly variable, the wild fish are not quite as variable as wild guppies, though much more so than P. picta or P. parae--the closest relatives. . .
  They live only in two sites in Venezuela, one of them (Cumana) next to the city dump, so they might even be extinct now in the wild.  Someone should try to go back and check.  The second population I only heard about but was unable to find--at the base of the Peninsula de Paria . . .
         With best wishes,
                      John A. Endler
                      Professor of Biology

Two other fishes Armando sent, the one below is on arival, and then a month later.

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Compare the report by Professor Endler to the information Armando has produced below. In gathering evidence it is helpful to compare several sources of information and test to see the accuracy of each report. In textual criticism this is also important. It is important to test the accuracy of a single person by multiple reflections on a single subject. Armando and Professor Endler's reports never contradict each other, though they do differ on the facts presented. Armando also founf these fish in another alose by lagoon, and, true to form, it was a different phenotype.

Endler does not describe the lake, but the water, Armando describes more of the lake features and corroborates Endler's description of the water conditions, etc.
This is helpful in discerning what the true facts are about the fish in the wild and the conditions under which it lives.
There are some redundancies in Armando's text caused by my editorial method, that is, I edited several e-mails down to this text, the remainder of which is listed below. The redundancies show his consistency in relating the facts.

This picture was recently updated with pictures of the same fish 7 months later. The lighting and camera are the same with the exception of the fish position, all other facotrs are even. This is why the multiple images are useful, it allows you to see more of what you observe in a tank, lighting from different angles as the fish moves helps the brain to understand what the fish really looks like. The fish darkened and the colors became intense. The fish is highly active and one of the healthiest fish in the tank. Endlers colors tend to change a little as they mature, but the variability of these fish, F1 or F2 from the wild, seems to be more intense. The lighting is slightly different and the white spots on the picture in the lower right are water drops on the box holding the fish.
Endler commented to both Armando and to me that the pictures of his fish are more live the variability that he remembered seeing in the wild populations in 1975.

The following are clips from Armando's E-mails:

 I've collected a number of wild Endler's livebearers in Cumana, Venezuela, and now have a large stock of pure "Endler's"(with seven or eight distinct color "types" and a number of tail forms). . .
Professor Endler was the one that directed me on how to get to Laguna de los Patos in Cumana.  The Laguna is an estuary which not only had a city dump next to it, but now has several sewer pipes emptying into it on one side!
Laguna de los Patos is not a single body of water, but rather several shallow mangrove estuaries that interconnect during the rainy season.  This may be the reason that the Endler's and several other fish species have been able to survive there.  Part of the Laguna appears to have undergone some sort of restoration or replanting effort. My first collection was in December of 1997, followed by a couple in 1998.  I have since changed jobs and no longer travel into Latin America.  I would collect over weekends on trips in which I needed to stay more than a week.  In addition to the Endler's, there were a couple of other livebearer species (Poecilia sphenops? and a Limia species). . .

 Laguna de los Patos, in Cumana Venezuela is a fresh to brackish water estuary largely surrounded by Black Mangroves.  On these Mangroves there were small rookeries of Scarlet Ibis, Egrets, Herons and Pelicans.  There was a section of this lagoon that looked to have been stripped of all vegetation and was adjacent to a cliff that at one time may have been some sort of land fill judging from the rubbish of all sorts that was floating in that part of the lagoon. There appeared to be a new road being built along the same part of the lagoon.  In the future, this road may keep the rubbish from getting into the lagoon.  On the ocean side of the lagoon there is a finger channel crossing the beach side road and dying a couple hundred meters from the ocean . . .

The water of the laguna itself ranged from a pea green color to a silty red-grey.  It was quite stagnent in areas, where a mucousy white film covered the surface.  The bottom of the lagoon was mucky and rich in leaf detritus.
The familiar smell of rotting sea side vegitation was everywhere.  The area surrounding the lagoon was quite arid; red soils dominating the cliff side of the laguna and calcareous sand on the ocean side.  The laguna is largely fresh water, but I believe the salt content of the laguna increases during the dry season.  The water depth varies from a few centimeters to three or four meters,(the largest portion being shallow flats).  Unfortunately I have no photographs of the laguna.

. . . There are 7 or 8 dominant forms or color "types", one of the pretiest of which is the one currently sold in the hobby.  There is also a color form where black coloration is dominant only breaking into orange-red above the eye in a streak that terminates in the caudal fin.  Light colored dorsals (baby blue or yellow) also occur.  The tail fin can have a top sword, bottom sword, double sword, a plume and even a small "delta" of sorts . . . for those of you that enjoy weird strains, occasionally in my stock, male specimens appear in which the entire body is orange with transverse black bars.  Their dorsal fins are brilliant yellow with black spots and more rays.  These fish are roughly 1-1/2 times larger than typical Endler males with a stockier appearance.  They are very aggressive, and so far may in fact be sterile as I have been unable to produce a line of them. All the fish I've described were wild caught or derived from wild stocks and are "pure" Endlers.  I collected roughly 200 specimens over the various collections (~100 of which I brought back), unfortunately none of these exhibited the black pectorals that Prof. Endler described.

(Editor's note: Armando sent me this giant male, pure ELB. The fish above is about 50% larger than other males in the group and larger than any I have seen. It also jumps. When I placed it into this acrylic box in shallow water it almost jumped out three times. Armando noted this size popped up periodically in his pure ELB collection grown in his pond outside. They never appeared in my collection.)

I'm afraid my collections were random, in  fact, I explored different parts of the lake on different trips.  For the most part the same phenotypes existed in the different "pockets" of the lake (I would say there are 10-15 "types" within the lake, of which I collected and brought back alive 7 or 8).  These "types" will breed true if isolated for a few generations(I do have a few of my
favorites in indoor aquariums).  I believe that during heavy rain periods these "pockets" within the lake interconnect.  Although slightly different in coloration and finnage they do school together.  One interesting note, in the South Western quadrant of the lake, closer to the old dump (which was in the process of being removed during my last visit, (the lake is being made into a
park of some sort)) the strain or type you refer to, that Dr. Kallman distributed, is more prevalent than in the other parts of the lake.  This part of the lake also produced the "all orange" form I wrote of.  To answer your question, there are variations in the percentages of the different phenotypes in different parts of the lake.  Which brings up another situation I've noticed in my pond, despite my large "seed stock" there seems to be dominant traits that are appearing more often in the offspring, and the "true endler" (for lack of a better description) is one of them.
On a side note: it sounds like I found a great variety of this fish, in truth, there are not that many "types" compared to the wild guppies I've collected from other single locations, which often yielded no two males that looked alike.
I believe it was Dominic that spoke of the differences in the females. I've noticed it also.  Most of mine are the darker bronze color while some are more of a silver.  Like Dominic, I've also noted a difference in the eyes. Most having dark centers with a pale iris surrounding, while a few are completely dark.

. . . If you think those are nice, you should have seen the "ones that got away", actually the few specimens I got never made it. Picture that bright orange extending from the snout to the tail even the gonopodium and outer part of the eyes, they then had a yellow dorsal with dark spots and transverse black bars along the posterior part of the body!!
I believe it was Dominic that spoke of the differences in the females. I've noticed it also.  Most of mine are the darker bronze color while some are more of a silver.  Like Dominic, I've also noted a difference in the eyes.
Most having dark centers with a pale iris surrounding, while a few are completely dark. . .

. . .I'll try to describe the lake as best as I can from memory.  Actually, it was more of an Estuary except that it was landlocked.  The water depth ranged from very shallow (a few centimeters) to possibly several meters deep in areas.  The different "pools"
were somewhat connected in that very loose mud or silt (leaf detritus) lay between them, this is part of the reason I believe the pools intermix at least during the rainy season, even if only a few centimeters in depth.  The only true barrier is a dirt road that seems to split the lake into an Eastern and Western half although this road is only a foot or so above the water table and I bet it also floods during the rainy season.  The edges of a good part of the lake were lined with mangroves.  The water ranged from some what clear near the finger channel that approached the ocean, to pea soup green near the bird rookeries, to other shades of yellow green and rust near what appear to be some sewer or drainage pipes.  Where the sunlight is blocked near the rookeries by the mangroves, the water takes on a paler yellow green and columns of swirling protozoa can be seen, looking almost like dust.  Some areas were also more stagnant than others.  The endlers were found all over.  If I didn't lose my bearings, the lake is North West of the airport on the outskirts of town.  I remember having to cross a river to get there.
Best Regards, Armando

(Editor's note: I have placed a marker in Google Earth community so you can search and find this location.)

Adrian HD, Swamp River Aquatics

Adrian took these traits Armando mentions and line bread the various phenotypes into a spectacular groups of ELB's. If you intend on raising these fish, you ought at least to look at his collection. If you don't already have some, consider buying two or three of his fish and breeding them to produce a unique blend of the phenotypes, or a single phenotype to breed a certain pattern.

The fish I recieved were mature pairs and began to delelivery fry in about three days. Within a month there were 30-40 fry in each of the two containers (three pair in each).

You can see these at his site here, these are his photo's modified to fit my space requirements.

These are the fish below I got from Adrian to breed both separately and to interbreed with my stock to increase the blues, purples, and greens in my large tank.