This is a very unusual form of SJO, the fish first being caught by Swedish explorer Sjostedt near the waterfall of the Ndian river in Cameroon in the 1890s and described by Lonnberg in 1895. By 1904 by Arnold in Germany had it in the aquarium, - but from Nigeria not Cameroon and from that time on we have only seen this one color form of the fish. There was no holotype of Sjosted's fish and we can't actually know which morphotype it was. Perhaps somebody knows or somebody will have to go there and see what's there. It would be nice to have an actual type specimen from the original location.

In 1989, Horst Gressens of the DKG went to Cameroon and brought back the fish pictured here. The carmine on the Nigerian form is replaced by scarlet and the fish lacks any trace of orange. Instead the tail is hues of pinks and purples yet it still has the same overall blue color.

Apparently, when Gressens showed up at the KFN convention with them they asked what they were and he said "sjostedi" to which they replied "no they're not" until he explain ed had obtained them from a new collection point in Cameroon.

This begs the question. Are these the same fish Sjostedt found? Or did he find the orange tailed form?

The fish I took pictures of in 1997 are F1 from Gressens' fish, Dale Weber of the BAKA picked them up at the DKG auction and I got them from him. I passed them to Russ Feilzer when I moved from Los Angeles to Canada in 1990.