Osphronemus septemfasciatus - Giant Borneo Gourami

If you are to substitute bigfoot to a fish species then the Giant Borneo Gourami is probably the perfect candidate of Bigfoot in the fish world. It is spotted and caught by fisherman all over the Borneo continent but yet, you cannot find a single living fish out there for sale. I've spread words to Sarawak, Brunei, Sabah and Kalimantan for the passed 3 years and I could not get a single living specimen.

Osphronemus septemfasciatus - Giant Borneo Gourami, is a recent discovered species of the Osphronemus family by Tyson R. Roberts 1992. His data shows the extend of the species as below

RANGE DESCRIPTION

The species is known from Sarawak (central and north), Brunei Darussalam, Kalimantan Barat (Kapuas drainage), Kalimantan Timur (Mahakam drainage), and Kalimantan Utara (Kayan drainage) Borneo (Roberts 1992, Kottelat and Lim 1996, Parenti and Lim 2005).

There are probably 2 var that I've noticed of the Osphronemus septemfasciatus species. Those from the Sarawak and Brunei region are of the greenish type and those from the Kalimantan side is of the reddish and also the greenish type.

Sarawak greenish var

Brunei var

Kalimantan Reddish var

To ID a young O. Septemfasciatus is not easy unless you are dealing with the obvious bar pattern, some are somewhat inbetween as in any other fishes and thats when your nightmare begins.

The key point of O. Septemfasciatus is that it possessed 6-7 "Tappered bars" as compared to O.Goramy that is anywhere 6-10 bars even bars.

A bigger specimen around 9" is probably your safest bet as you can identify another key trait special to the Osphronemus septemfasciatus and that is the cheek line

Young O. Septemfasciatus showing the cheek line

Notice the cheek line

3" young sep already showing their trademark cheek line

After many years in the search I've finally found the Osphronemus septemfasciatus by Nasir jumat the same guy that found my sp. Borneo if you do recalled earlier.

hope to update some more when I've more information. cheers

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