Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009) - Home...

At around 3.30pm we decided to pack and head home. Though the hunting hours is short, the trip is worthwhile afterall. We had indeed explored a new place, which neither of us had ever encounter before, despite my dad who used to travel alot during his working days. The hunting spot was amazingly beautiful. We told ourselves that we must come back to spend at least one night there to experience the wonderful world of nature :)

So back again to the 1 hour ride on rough and bumpy road. Along the way, we did stop by one of the smaller stream to try our luck for Gastromyzon auronigrus. But still none, mostly G. monticola. At that time, it was just a simple tryout catch, so didn't measure the parameters. However, I would like to state that the water temperature is slightly higher, probably around 29°C to 30°C. Anyway it's not accurate, so don't try and set your Gastromyzon tank to 30°C :). But honestly the water there is much warmer compare to our initial hunting spot.

So after failing to collect G. auronigrus we finally decided to head home.

We reached home at around 7.30pm. It was already dark then. So we unload our stuff, and the fishes. I placed the fishes in their quarantine tanks, ate diner, made my first post about this trip, bath, and sleep. LOL......the journey was tiring......haha, and best of all we enjoyed ourselves. And dad just KO after diner......haha. Lil sis, hah! still have the energy to spent some time watching video....of course, she didn't do much accept for scooping the fishes....haha, she told me that she couldn't stop thinking about Gastromyzon auronigrus when she tries to sleep...so the reason to go watching some videos.

Anyway 13th June 2009 is one of the intresting day in our life :)

Photos of G. cornusaccus and G. monticola will be up soon.....stay tune.

Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009) - Water parameters...

Okay, as usual, if anyone reading my blog and would want to know the water parameters of the river which is home to G. auronigrus, G. cornusaccus and G. monticola...here it is:

Temperature: 27.6°C
pH: 7.5
Hardness: 6°dKH (approx. 107 ppm KH)
Sampling time: 11.30 pm
Date: 13th June 2009
Climate description: Drought

Please this is for information purpose only. Parameters may varies during climate change. It is not advisable to comply exactly to the above parameters, thank you :)

30°C for G. monticola habitat? Read more bout it in the next post :)

Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009) - Hunting for Gastromyzon auronigrus...

Part of our main objective of this trip was to hunt the Gastromyzon auronigrus. It was documented that the river we went collecting are home of 3 types of Gastromyzon species, G. auronigrus, G. cornusaccus and G. monticola.

However during this trip we only manage to collect G. cornusaccus and G. monticola. Base on my rough speculation, percentage sighting chance of G. auronigrus, G. cornusaccus and G. monticola in a calm river is around 0.1%, 1.9% and 98% respectively. Haha, honestly, it's quite difficult to tell the difference of the suckers in riffles, especially between cornusaccus and monticola. One can sight an adult monticola easily, but a little difficult to sight the cornusaccus as the cornusaccus is rather a smaller species compare to the monticola and might resemble the monticola juvenile.

On the other hand, I did not even had the chance of sighting the G. auronigrus. That 0.1% sighting chance is based on my lil sis claim that she did saw a G. auronigrus swiming near the river bank, and by the time she wanted to show me, it went into hiding under some boulder. What an opportunity :(

The same goes to the percentage collecting rate. 0% for G. auronigrus, 9.6% for G. cornusaccus and 90.4% for G. monticola. Haha...what an unexpected trip. We thought that we were able to at least collect one G. auronigrus, since my lil sis claim she sighted one........:(

It's okay for me and dad, we will come back next time for G. auronigrus. This time better, we plan to camp there since it's such a beautiful place, so we will have more time to hunt for G. auronigrus. Hahaha....lil sis felt regretted during the whole journey back home for able to sight the G. auronigrus but not able to even collect a single piece.

Dad and lil sis taking a good inspection of what they caught.....G. auronigrus? Hahaha, not a chance :(


Home of G. auronigrus, G. cornusaccus and G. monticola


Very nice river...the forest here is untouched...love it:)

I'll spare the next post for the water parameters.........:)

Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009) - Dry season...

During our journey to our designated spot, we noticed that there's sign of drought. While traveling on the red earth road we saw some small stream were dried up. The trees and grasses along the road were covered with dust and in some part, instead of green plant, they all turn into red, cause of dust from the red earth road. Boy, it must have not been raining for quite some time.

Some part of the river in the national park are dried up


Certain part of the river turned into a pool during the drought

Anyway the drought doesn't limit us to collect some suckers...

Gastromyzon monticola and Gastromyzon cornusaccus

This is the only sucker picture I capture during the trip...I regreted for not able to capture picture and video of them in the wild :(

Find out about the hunt for Gastromyzon auronigrus in the next post...

Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009) - The Journey...

Here's the full story of my Borneo Sucker Trip on the 13th June 2009...

We (me, dad and lil sis) started our journey from house at around 7.30am. It was a fine Saturday morning. It took us about 3 hours drive to our destination town. And another about 1 hour drive from the town to our designated spot for sucker collection.

First 3 hour road drive was fine (tar road all the way), but the other 1 hour drive was rather rough and bumpy (gravel and red earth).

At around 11.30am we finally reach our destination. It's rather secluded deep in the jungle. And there's a national park which I think is quite new, setup for the purpose to prevent illegal logging and preserve the forest flora and fauna. Well I guess maybe it's new, cause I didn't saw any lodge where you can put up a night. However, there are camp site for campers. It's such a beautiful place, the river is damn crystal clear, and best of all you can find natural made jacuzzi in some part of the river, YES natural made jacuzzi where the flow of the water gives your body that nice massage and we actually plan to go back and camp here. The forest is untouched, accept for the road construction which connects local villagers to the town.

Arrgh! If only I have take some pictures......I made a mistake for not taking some pics of the place. I was actually saving my camera memory and battery for photos and video of Borneo Sucker in the wild, but turn out it was wasted after all, I didn't manage to photograph or video any wild suckers.....sad.

By the way, the national park is located across the river and here's one interesting photo that I manage to capture which I think could explain...

See that 4x4 crossing the river? We are actually waiting in queue to cross

Hah! This is good experience...and not many people have experienced this :) This is real river crossing and not any man made path. Real Fun!

To be continued...find out more in the next post....

Borneo Sucker Trip (13th June 2009)......

Would like to do a real quick post....

Just came back from a Borneo Sucker hunting trip today.....was excited with what I caught, and would like to take their pictures and post it here......but when we arrived home, it's already dark, all we can manage to do is just place the fishes into their quarantine tank :)

Will be posting up their pictures real soon, this is exciting, cant wait to do this.

There's alot to say about this trip, I will spare it in the next post. And boy, we (me, lil sis, and dad) are damn tired after this 1 day trip. Bout 8 hours driving up and back home :(.......

Will get some rest now, and begin updating this blog in the next few days.....stay tune, this is gonna be interesting as you will see new pictures of some Borneo Sucker that you cant find anywhere in the net :)

Cheers :)
Borneo Sucker

P.S. I haven't even take my bath when I did this post......see how excited am I? See you soon

Pictures of my Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.)

I think I have created some curiosity to Borneo Sucker Lovers, when I publish my first video on Borneo Sucker in the wild. People were asking what species were they belong to? Honestly, I myself can’t tell...even after referring to Dr. Tan’s Borneo Sucker book.

So I decided to post pics of the suckers I caught, hopefully someone can tell what species they belong to...Here are some of the pics, you can view more of my pics here at My Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) - Album 1

There are few type of colour pattern you can see here, however they have the same caudal and dorsal fin colour. All of them have red/orange at the edge of their fins.

Enjoy :)

From My Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) - Album 1

From My Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) - Album 1

From My Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) - Album 1

From My Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) - Album 1

Water parameters of Borneo Sucker (Gastromyzon sp.) habitat

Okay, in addition to the moss collecting trip, I also brought along some simple test kit to measure the water parameters of Borneo Suckers (Gastromyson sp.) natural habitat. The idea to measure the water parameters was a result by interested parties around the world requesting for more infos about this suckers. So here it is...

Some waterfall at upstream...people use to come here for picnic

For the image above, the parameters are:
Temperature: 24.8°C
pH: 7.5
Hardness: 3°dKH (approx. 54 ppm KH)
Sampling time: 1.00 pm

The spot I used to catch this suckers about 1km downstream from the spot above

For the image above, the parameters are:
Temperature: 25.7°C
pH: 7.5
Hardness: 2°dKH (approx. 36 ppm KH)
Sampling time: 2.30 pm

But as a warning, I’m limited to only three of this water parameters...and if in any case, if you find that the infos are not enough or inaccurate please give me a comment, and I’ll try to work things out.

Borneo Suckers (Gastromyzon sp.) feeding on cucumber

Okay, here's a video I made about my suckers feeding on cucumber. I was just playing and testing around the food source that I can obtain from my kitchen. Cucumber seems to fit the menu...

They will start eating from the middle/inside of the cucumber which is softer, and work their way out to the harder part of the cucumber.

Hmm...not sure what's the nutritional fact like, but I guess they can't thrive solely on cucumber, so this is just a treats for my suckers.

On the other hand, I do feed algae to my suckers....maybe make a video how I feed algae to my suckers in the future, in the meantime, enjoy this video :)

Borneo Suckers, Gastromyzon sp. in the wild video

Okay, this video was shot during my fish hunting trip on 26th May 2009.

I don't think National Geographic or Discovery have ever documented on this fishes......lol

Anyway this is my simple, down to earth, video documentary on Borneo suckers.

Enjoy...

Terrapin brought us luck on 26th May 2009 fish hunt...

After an unsuccesful hunt in the evening the day before, we (me and my sis) decided for another try today. Well we didn't go back the same place, but instead we went somewhere near our home, and also this time we went there in the morning.

One of Borneo suckers natural habitat

Borneo suckers grazing on rocks feeding on microbes and algae

It's a waterfall we try today. The picture above shows the natural habitat of Borneo Suckers, Gastromyzon sp. and how they suck and graze on rocks.

LOL...that's the best picture I can capture, using my digital camera. Anytime I try to get near them for a better shot, they will skitter away.

In the beginning, it's impossible to catch even one, they skitter of immediately into deeper water and hide when they saw us coming into the water. You know, it's hard to catch them when they are in deeper water.

So we decided to go for a hike up the waterfall to see if there's any good and shallow spot for catching this suckers. Well we did found some shallow spot, but still we can't even get one....hahaha, I guess they went into hiding the moment they saw us.....lol

While searching for signs of suckers, suddenly my sis shouted at me, "Hey, there's a tortoise, arrr....no, no a terrapin......is it?".....LOL my sis was amaze till she can't tell the different from a tortoise and a terrapin, as this is her first time sighting a terrapin in the wild. I myself was puzzled as well to find a terrapin in a waterfall...and that's not that, it's up on a hill as well.

A very unusual terrapin we found

Okay, I know the correct name for it should be soft-shelled turtle, but......lol we have been using the term "terrapin" to describe this kind of turtle.

We've never seen this kind of terrapin before, the colour marking is different from what we normally see, so we decided to adopt it as our new pet.

It was almost noon then, we decided to go back the place we came from, since we didn't manage to catch any sucker. We try to give that deep pool another try. A few trials we faild, but suddenly, out of sudden, an idea of catching these sucker just struck my mind....and after that, catching them was pretty easy, especially in deeper water.

Catch of the day...

Colour variant (striped and spotted)...I guess they are still the same species

So the picture above are some of the suckers we caught in about 1 hour time....after finish catching, we were really hungry and decided to go home for lunch.

I guess the terrapin must have brought us luck.....:)

Borneo sucker hunting with lil' sis on 25th May 2009

The stream we went hunting

Today's hunt wasn't that fruitful....didn't get what we expected, though we do manage to catch some hillstream loach or Borneo suckers, but all of them are small.

We started hunting at around 3pm but I guess it's probably not the right timing to hunt this suckers. Based on my other evening hunt, I also experienced this results.

and there's my lil's sis

Besides the suckers, we also collected other fishes, but yet to be identified. As far as my fish identification knowledge is, one of them is a loach, but I have no clue what type....And also few types of fishes which I guess belongs to the Cyprinid family.

My digital camera, really cant take good quality close up shot, so I'm not able to post the fish picture here. Probably will post it sometime in the future, when I have a beter shot.

If anyone doesn't know how Borneo Sucker looks like, I do have pictures of them from my previous hunt......they do look similar to butterfly loach.

Borneo Sucker/hillstream loach, Gastromyzon sp.

Okay....that's it for now, will be planning another hunting trip soon.....:)