** This fish comes from Peru, and here in Europe we call this fish Silbersaum. It was Luling that first collect this fish in 1972, and sent fishes to USA, the fishes came then to Europa and I got my first fish in 1975. They were sold as "Aequidens" rivulatus.
When the "Goldsaum" came on the market in the end of the 1970's it looks like everybody had forgotten this "Silbersaum" from Peru and called the new one from Ecuador, "Aequidens" rivulatus. I was not agree with this, because I still had the "Silbersaum" from Peru. But, I could not be, absolute certain that I was right.
I have been working hard with these fishes ever since, and this ends up with my first collecting trip to Ecuador in 1987. I collected the fishes earlier mention from Quininde, but, I did not know at that time that I had collected the real Aequidens rivulatus, because I was not able to bring back fish alive. Only the dead material was sent to Stockholm, to Dr. Sven O. Kullander.
I went back to Ecuador in 1989 and collected in rivers south of Guayaquil and even south of Machala. The nearest town was La Avanzada and I followed the road to Balsas and passed a river called Rio Arenillas. There I collect "Aequidens" spec. "Goldsaum" and "Cichlasoma" festae. The last week, I went up to the biotop near Quininde, and was able to bring back the "Aequidens" rivulatus, but still I did not know if I had the real one. The fishes grew up to be very nice fishes and then I start compare the fishes with the other ones, and I was bothering Dr. Kullander and asked him if he could look at my material from Ecuador. It took some years, but in a combination trip when he went to London, he also took the time to check Günthers material. And then he told me that I most certainly had the real "Aequidens" rivulatus. I went also back to Ecuador in 1991, 1993 and in March 2003.
So, then it was this "Silbersaum" from Peru, what was the distribution of this fish ? I went to Peru in 1994 to seek this information. I had with me Dr. Patrick de Rham and another friend. To make it short; We found out that the southern distribution of this fish was in Rio Pisco. When I asked Dr. Hernan Ortega at the Nat. Hist. Museum in Lima, he also said that they had not found the "Silbersaum" further south. Then I went north to see if I could establish the northern distribution of the "Silbersaum". We started in Rio Tumbes where we collect the "Goldsaum", we did not find any "Silbersaum. We went up in Rio Zarumilla and collected several places, still collecting only the "Goldsaum" also in a small stream/river called Rio Faical we still collect the "Goldsaum".
I also wanted to check the rivers south to see if I would found the "Goldsaum" and the "Silbersaum" together in one river. But, all the rivers were dry, and it was only desert. We did not found any rivers with water before we came to a small place about one hour drive north of Piura. The place was called Pueblo Mallares. There we collected our first "Silbersaum", but unfortunately also Tilapias. Tetras like Rhodsia, Brycon, Lebiasina, Bryconamericanus peruanes, Pseudocurimata and Guppy. Water temp. 22,5 C. pH 8,2, dH 31, kH 15 and 1850 micro siemens. We went the day after, up to a place called Tambo Grande, passing Sullana and was collecting in every river we crossed. And in all the places we collect, we collect "Aequidens" spec. "Silbersaum". I had also collect material for the Museum in Stockholm, and the material was from Rio Cañete and Rio Pisco in the south. Because Dr. Kullander told me, he did not have any material from the south, only north of Lima. There was also some small differences between the "Ae".spec."Silbersaum from the south and the northern type. But, I don't think the last word has been spoken yet, about this issue, but I feel I'm pretty close. It remains to see. who grab this and describe the other fishes. They might be called something else than "Aequidens" in the end. But, in the meantime we can still call the fish "Aequidens" with quotation marks.
