In the Freshwater Aquarium Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lake Tanganyika.

In many of these Neolamprologus species, the female is even smaller than the male, and it is only she who can get all the way into the shell, where she deposits her eggs. The male is larger, to defend the territory. Lake Nyasa is the alternate name for Lake Malawi. Lake Victoria, not in fact a rift lake, was the lake featured in the last sequences of "The African Queen."

Answer: blue and green.

The pigment-carrying structures are called "chromatophores." Reflective guanine crystals by themselves are responsible for silver and white. The changeable, "shot" colors of blue and green, also familiar from some tropical butterflies, demonstrate the "Tyndall effect" named for the British physicist who first gave a satisfactory explanation of it.

Answer: between carbon dioxide and oxygen production.

The "balance" refers to the plants' production of oxygen, which is respired by the fish, which in turn give off carbon dioxide, which the plants require for photosynthesis.

Answer: London.

Though the current London Aquarium, across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament, was opened in 1997, the first London Aquarium, opened in Regent's Park as an adjunct to the Zoological Gardens, which Londoners were quick to dub "The Zoo," was the first public aquarium anywhere. Within three years, however, P.T. Barnum had opened an aquarium in New York.

In the age of steamships, Hamburg was always the main port of entry for tropical fishes imported into Germany.

Answer: ventral fins.

The operculum is the gill-cover. Fishes have no "opercular" fins. The caudal fin is the tailfin. The ventral fins are paired fins down by the vent. The gourami species name Trichogaster trichopterus refers to these "thread fins."

Answer: Yes

As South America rifted apart from Africa, the Amazon began flowing westward, away from the high rifting "welt." The system continued to flow into what was becoming the Pacific Ocean, until the rise of the Andes blocked its way. For many millions of years, vast freshwater lakes formed in the heart of the continent.

Then, as the Andes were further uplifted, the Amazon found a new outlet, back towards the ever-widening Atlantic Ocean!

Answer: About 26,000 or so.

William N. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes, published in 1998 in 3 vols. and on-line, is the most complete fish reference ever put together, with about 26,000 valid species, and growing at a rate of 200 to 300 species added each year. The modern teleost fishes are the most successful vertebrates ever, judged in terms of the number of species they have evolved.

Answer: Clown Loaches (Botia)

Clown Loaches and other Botia species will slurp up snails even from shells too big to crack in their jaws. None of the other species has any reputation for snail-eating at all.

Answer: a parasite.

All worms are invertebrates, without backbones. You can distinguish a nematode from a planarian easily: the nematode thrashes tirelessly in the water, while the planarian creeps along surfaces, including the water's surface. The wormlike aquatic parasites of fishes have no visible life-stage separate from their host: their eggs are microscopic.

Answer: northern Burma and Thailand?

The "heart of Danio country" is India, with species in Sri Lanka and ranging eastward as far as southern China. In fact, new Danios have recently been found in northern Burma and the upper Mekong. But there are no Danios in dry Afghanistan, none in South America at all. And New Guinea has a freshwater fish fauna entirely separate from the rest of Asia.