The "Aeneus" group

The species Corydoras aeneus is one that is becoming more and more difficult to determine, the original description (Gill 1858)was of fish collected in the clear water streams of western Trinidad. However over a number of years there have been numerous specimens collected from just about every major river system in South America excluding Chile, Central and Southern Argentina. In this section I will list and show as many of the varieties as I can obtain, with location detail wherever possible. There have been a lot of controversy over the so-called "Black aeneus" so I have included a statement from Hans-Georg Evers to clarify the origin of this fish. "I knew the guy who "created" the "black aeneus". His name was Hartmut Eberhardt. He lived in Weimar and was a dear friend of Dr. Hanns-Joachim Franke. Both were my friends and both are already dead and it seems, that some storys need to be retold. Hartmut had the very first black aeneus amongst his thousands of normally coloured ones of the "schultzei-type". The black ones have orange fins in the first months of their life and so does one type of aeneus from Venezuela. This type lives in the Llanos of V and also Colombia and is regularly being imported. When they darken their body coloration (stress, light, etc.) they resemble the black youngsters and this might have lead to the name Black aeneus from Venezuela".