Interesting on the behaviours. My red Lizards also remain mainly in plants. I had three, acquired around four years ago, and one disappeared about four or five months back, no idea why or what happened to him. But the other two spend their "resting periods" in the crown of Amazon swordplants. One of these also has a favourite niche in one of the chunks of wood, and he tends to go their when I do water changes. The regular R. parva is usually on the sand somewhere, and he has from the start been out and about. I've had this one for seven years this month. I've never observed any interaction among these.
I have a trick that I have used for years to signal feeding. I lightly tap on the tank frame when I add food. This has served very well to bring out all the "shy" fish. And within a few minutes, all the whiptails are at the front, where the tabs/pellets/disks are dropped. It is easy to train fish to this; my Farlowella fry learned it very quickly even on their own in the grow-out tank. I particularly like this trick because it allows me to count the fish that might otherwise not be visible for hours.
I did read that Planet Catfish article on these whiptails and did see the reference towards Burgess Atlas labelling Rineloricaria lanceolata as Hemiloricaria lanceolata.
But did not know if Hemiloricaria was accepted but am assuming generally are commonly known as Rineloricaria.
Burgess called them
Rineloricaria [I think you just got your words reversed, I checked PC]. It was Isbrucker et al. (2001) that revalidated the genus
Hemiloricaria; originally erected by Bleeker in 1862 (at the same time he erected
Rineloricaria) it was subsequently felt by many that the distinctions were not sufficient, and
Hemiloricaria soon became a synonym of
Rineloricaria. Isbrucker et al. (2001) moved several species from
Rineloricaria into
Hemiloricaria and in the same study further
erected two new genera, Leliella and Fonchiiichthys, for some other Rineloricaria species. These reclassifications were mainly based upon differences in sexual dimorphism. Subsequent studies did not accept much of this; Ferraris (2003, 2007) in particular retained Hemiloricaria as synonymous with Rineloricaria [though he resurrected it as a distinct genus but without any comment in 2007] and he dismissed Leliella but accepted Fonchiiichthys with two species, the third being synonymous with one of these. Covain & Fisch-Muller (2007) followed Ferraris.
It was Rodriguez & Reis (2008) that accepted Isbrucker et al. (2001) in splitting
Rineloricaria and
Hemiloricaria, but as I mentioned previously, they had a geographic distinction to the split. Rapp Py-Daniel & Fichberg (2008) in describing a new species placed it in
Rineloricaria, "following Covain & Fisch-Muller (2007)" in their classification using
Rineloricaria. They did note that further phylogenetic study would likely clarify the taxonomic confusion eventually for this genus.
The ichthyological database of the California Academy of Sciences, which is maintained by Dr. William Eschmeyer, is generally accepted for the current status of all species of fish.
Hemicloricaria holds no valid species, being deemed synonymous with
Rineloricaria, and the two
Fonchiiichthys species are accepted as valid.
Hope I've provided something of interest to some, anyway.
Byron.
Beautiful fish.
