The Blue Gularis

Discovered in the late 1800's, but as early as November of 1905 this species was being kept in aquaria by hobbyists in Germany; a photo of this fish exists today shown below. Innes photographed Blue Gularis in color in the early 20th century and over the years it has been an emblematic and iconic fish, chosen as the logo for the first national Killifish organization - the AKA. In 1998 Horst Gressens collected a new form in Cameroon, far away from the Nigerian coastal forms that did not have the characteristic orange tail, being instead, a sort of pink-lavender color with no orange in the fish at all..

1905 Arnold1932 InnesLoe, 2016 (Gaisor)
female
female
art
art
http://i.killi.es/s/SJO/xrefs/1932_Moody/01-3-Copr_1920-William_T_Inness.jpg ./art/00-0-Copr_2011_Ken_McKeghen.jpg
planted
planted
Photos of gularis in planted tanks - they make an impressive display. Other than the fact they can eat their weight in Amano shrimp 3 times a day they're perfect for aquascaped tanks.
fry
fry
juvenile
juvenile
location
Cameroon -
Nigeria -
location
2022 1st place AKA convention. Photo: Bretz, Fish: Epperson.
AKA - Show winning SJO
show winners
Show winning SJO
Fpx. fallax
similar

The gularis tail fin is unique by being trilobate or three pointed but other killifish have the same color pattern in the tail and withing the highly variable killifish species there are on occasion individuals of other species in other genera that look alarmingly similar in at least one way, to SJO.


Aphyosemion herzogi
Japanese Dwarf Red Gularis. Phoro and fish by Black Jack.
BKA-80 - CI2012 - DeSouza -
DKG_Blue - Dwarf_Red - Sexton - sports_hybrids - thornton - us_blue -
strains

"Form circulating in the 1980s in the UK"

The first gularis color phoro. Photo by Innes.
1915_Schjerning - Germany 1932_Moody - Innes
1964_Siegal - US Import 1971_Hoppe - King of the Killies
xrefs

External References
Description
Germany
Innes
US Import
King of the Killies
The Gularis Lecture


Note the spelling of the name, described in Eschemeyer:
"sjostedti, Fundulus Lönnberg [E.] 1895:191 [Öfversigt af Kongliga Vetenskaps-akademiens Forhandlingar v. 52 (no. 3); ref. 14584] Waterfall of the Ndian River (4°57'N, 8°53'E) and Bonge, western Cameroon. Syntypes: ZMUU 272 (2). Type catalog: Wallin 1996:61 [ref. 32133]. Originally as sjöstedti; since name is not of German origin [Art. 32.5.2.1], the species should be sjostedti and not sjoestedti. The fact that the name of the Swedish collector is printed as Sjöstedt does not make a difference. •Valid as Aphyosemion sjoestedti [sic] (Lönnberg 1895) -- (Wildekamp et al. 1986:236 [ref. 6198] with a holotype [no holotype was established originally], Seegers 1988:49 [ref. 19980], Romand in Lévêque et al. 1992:601 [ref. 21590]). •Valid as Fundulopanchax sjostedti (Lönnberg 1895) -- (Wildekamp 1996:207 [ref. 23649], Murphy & Collier 1997:797 [ref. 25585], Lazara 2001:135 [ref. 25711], van der Zee et al. 2007:109 [ref. 30034] as sjoestedti, Collier 2019:32 [ref. 37884]). Current status: Valid as Fundulopanchax sjostedti (Lönnberg 1895). Nothobranchiidae. Distribution: West-central Africa: Cameroon. Habitat: freshwater."


The geographical information is not entirely correct however, as the fish is also found in coastal Nigeria and there is at least one report from Vin Kutty (Pers comms, 1988) of them being found in the ocean near the shore and being commonly found there for years.