Badis ruber - Thai Adventure: Searching for Rare Fish

Asian Expedition

I spent an interesting month in Southeast Asia with Horst Linke, Heinrich Bayer and Rüdiger Schäfer. The first and last stop on our journey was Thailand. In between, we visited Jakarta, Kalimantan Tengah, Singapore, Malaysia and then back to Bangkok.

Where Badis ruber lives

From there we set off north on a journey of over 2000 km, along the sacred Mekong River on the border with Laos. Here lives a fish that is now highly valued and sought after by labyrinth fish enthusiasts. It is Badis ruber, a small fish reaching barely 4 cm. I want to introduce you to its interesting biotope. Originally it was claimed to live in Myanmar. But we have confirmed by our discovery that it also lives in Thailand.

Thailand, with its 60 million inhabitants, has more than 3000 mostly family farms involved in aquarium production. There are about 600 species of fish living in Thailand, and about 300 species are exported by Thais. Exports are mainly to the USA, Singapore, Europe and Japan. More than 50 billion US dollars annually!

But among these species are fish that no one would expect here. East African cichlids, South American dwarf cichlids, but mainly livebearers and labyrinth fish, especially bettas, are bred here on a large scale.

Fish or "Pla" play an irreplaceable role in Thai culture. Not only as an important source of protein, but also as a way to fill leisure time and a source of livelihood. What carp means to South Bohemians, "Plakad" or Betta splendens means to Thais.

Our trip was conceived by Horst Linke with the generous help of Katsumo Kubota, a Japanese who is one of the largest exporters of fish from Thailand. I had an interesting story with him, as I was the only one who didn't have to speak English with him. He lived in Russian Siberia as a child and spoke Russian quite well. His employee Thersdrak, whom we proudly called "assistant", was the driver of our rented Toyota and our helper and guide at the same time.

He knew exactly what kind of fish are caught in which biotopes. The first task was: Badis ruber, so shortly after Nong Khai we stopped at the first stop. For the whole 200 km it was the same, the Mekong on the left, various interesting biotopes and countless temples on the right.

Our first rice field was about half a hectare in size. Irrigation streams flowed around it, some with quite muddy water, others with quite clear, even crystal clear water. Its temperature was 29°C, the air temperature in the shade 32°C. Conductivity mostly 49 µS/cm, pH around 6. The current in the irrigation streams was stronger in places than I would have expected. There were more fish than I expected. But it's better to look at the pictures.

Images:

1. The Mekong flows through 4 countries and is an important source of livelihood for thousands of fishermen. We drove along this river for over 200 km.
2. Thersdrak (center) commanded us to change clothes, one of the 3 most important biotopes is ahead of us.
3. Quite an uninteresting piece of land for an ordinary tourist. But a real treasure for a European aquarist.
4. My first caught fish was Brachydanio albolineatus, the pearl danio.
5. The male Anabas testudineus measured about 12 cm. My net was very practical for this, I could immediately measure the length of the caught fish.
6. Female Anabas testudineus.
7. About 8 cm beautifully grown Trichogaster trichopterus, the three spot gourami.
8. In the faster flowing waters, I caught incredibly fast rasboras, mostly Rasbora (Parluciosoma) paviei. An aquarist fishing in an aquarium cannot imagine how fast these fish are in nature.
9. In the middle of the field, Rüdiger caught this local predator, about 15 cm in size.
10. Besides the pearl danios, there were also a number of barbs of the species Puntius stoliczkanus.
11. My first Badis ruber, a beautiful young male almost 3.5 cm long.
12. Catch from the first 10 minutes of fishing.
13. Horst was also looking at the beautiful croaking gouramis, Trichopsis schalleri.
14. Relatively fast current of irrigation streams. We mainly fished for local predators in stagnant waters.