In the 1970s ads for "Dwarf Red" or "Orange" Gularis were common in AKA F&E listings but by the 1980s and 1990s there was far less common. While I'd heard about them for years there were no published pictures of them and the firs time I saw one in the Milwaukee AKA convention in 1985 (check date) I was rather bowled over. They weren't THAT much smaller than a regular blue gularis nut the color was outstanding. I wasn't really red or orange, but a bright salmon color and the side of the body was just plastered in it, as though it had been dipped in easter eggs dye. It was the kind of saturated colors you're used to seeing on marine fish. I bought that fish but sadly no photos of it exist. In 1988 (89?) at the AKA convention in Redondo Beach I bought another of Szafreneck's fish and crossed them to to the 1st place Blue Gularis that Chris Diaz had entered.

I've had Dwarf Reds three times. Once in 1988, some German Dwarf Red from the AKA show, once in 1997 some more German Dwarf reds and again in 1998 from David Ramsey. The German fish were the strain maintained by Szafreneck, although in later years it was Luke who entered them, but they were recognizable as the same fish. and sadly, were getting small being almost certainly inbred. As an aside this inbreeding problem is not uncommon with Gularis, which prompted Al Mikkelson to wrote in article describing how to outbreed to counter inbreeding.

In 1999 I obtained Dwarf Red Gularis from David Ramsey and they were not like the German fish. They were bigger, had deeper bodies, more trilobate tail but not as intensely colored as the German fish. I hope the examples here illustrate those differences adequately. The photos of the German strain are not very good having been captured on Videotape, then digitized. By 2000 digital cameras were available as consumer products. The year before, the cheapest one was $15,000.00 USD, but it was possible by 2000 to buy a digital camera for just over $1000, and it worked about as well as a $50 2006 cell phone camera.

So, in conclusion, I think there aew two different "Dwarf Red" gularis floating around. I consider one to bt hew "German Dwarf Red" a small fish which seldom if ever has a trilobate tail. The other I consider to be "US Dwarf Red" strain a larger more robust fish that always has a trilobate tail albeit not quite as intensely colors ad the German fish.