Underwater Habitat, Rio Utive Panama

duanes · Aug 31, 2023

My tanks almost fully stocked, Danny my guide and I, went to the Rio Utive to get some below water GoPro footage.
While I floundered around with the GoPro, Danny casted a net and brough up 3 Plecos, that we kept.
The small Plecos we caught on previous trips, seem to have been eaten by a large goby in the tank.

Below is some of the raw (unedited) footage from that day.
There is about an hour more that needs to be edited that shows a few other fish, like gobies, Plecos, and 1 Andinoacara cichlid .
As you can see, Tetras and some other shoaling fish, are the dominant fish fauna.
tetra paradise

neutrino · Sep 1, 2023

Nice footage. One of my favorite things to do. Saw your CF post where you say pH was 8. Did you get the water temperature?

duanes · Sep 1, 2023

Water temp was 80'F, which helped me a lot.
After collecting just knee deep, at mid day with air temps @ 90"F, even a little effort gets exhausting quickly, but floating around, face down in 80'F water, makes the day a lot easier
Am in the process of editing this video now, if the youtube editor works the way its supposed to, it will lock off a couple minutes of fluff.

duanes · Sep 2, 2023

Just finished editing the last of the footage. This started out at about 20 minutes in length,
and starts with a couple gobies, clinging to a large boulder
To far away to tell if the are juvie Awaous , or tiny Sicydium.
An adult Awaous below (@ 7")

30 seconds later a quick Pleco shot, and then, back to the plethora of tetras, waiting for me to kick up the substrate.
This area, is a weekend swimming hole for locals, so the tetras following humans for the detritus we kick up must be par for the course.
Also near the end, some Agonostomus sp (mountain mullet) make an entrance, very common here in Panama.
Rio Utive 4 underwater
Agonostomus below, caught in a little stream on the island where I live, and 10 miles off the mainland coast.