I began kereping killies around 1973 and by that time "drwarf red" (sometimes listed as "Orange) gularis began appeading in the AKA trading post. The only information I could derive at the time was that they had been bred in Germany in the 1960s was one tasle. Another was, one guy found them in a patshop in Germany. I doubnt we'll evber know for sure but chanceesx are high they wre line bred in Germany. The larger modern orange strain appears to be line bred in the US. Lets back up a bit and look at this history of this fish. It begins in 1904 when the GErman aquariost Arnold obtained some. (expand) that original arnold strain hung arouind in the hobby in Germany forever. Ove the decades more were imporetwed - Innes reports importinfg them in the 1920s, Scheel documented them rather well, Axelros showed a photo of a wild male - but they all looked ther same - they were large blue gu;laris. I had noticed over the years in the AKA bulletin that thtere was one name synonymous with the draf red form - Szafrenick. HE sould list them in the trading post and they would do rather well at shows. As the years passed and I waws able to go to aka conventions I gotto see the Szaferencks fish, they were about half ther size of a regular gularis but the orange on the size and soldi orange ventral fins was the color of fresh king salmoo, and very sharply delijneated. The curious thing about this strain is they necver had fin extansion sin the caudal (tail) fin. The fin was still trilobate but never grew extansions like the larger fish did. For this reason alone I had always syuspected thiat is was not line3 bred and that somewhere out there in Cameroon or Nigeria is a small stain of these fish that lasked ther fin extension sin the pdctyrocl, anal and caiudal fine that Gularis as known for. Thwe orange was an odd thing too, so many other killies had a big blocjk or ofamge startying at the bas of the tail and in the lower half of the body going about halfwat towardss the head. F. avichgangg has the same orange spotch, so does A. amieti; sometimes F. filamentopsum ha the same. In the bog standard blue gulartis from Nigeria there is orange in the tail and that strrak extends into the body a littlt bit beyong the caudal peduncal. On drwf red gularis it extends halfway toward the snout, and the recs and anal fin are solid orange where in regular gularis they are light transpasrent blue to yrl;loe. Every yesr these fish would show up in the AKA show (and German shows) but I did notice over the years they were smaller and smaller. The last time I Saw them was 1997; I'd owned sa pair in 1989 but 1997 was the last time I saw them around. I have to say by then they really were asmall. I mean, somewhere between around the size of Fp. amieti - think a long thin gardneri. They were cute I supposeds but next to a real guylaris in a tank they just looked silly. I had noticed the decline in Szafreneks fish from the 970s to the 1990s - a littl smaller every year, but the coors became more intense as theybecame smaller. But, b7 1997 the colors were not as great either, that almos tiridecscent "looks like salmon" color just wasn't there any more. The decline of a special form or a special fish that I had grown up with was gone for all I could tell. Now that's just sad. In 1989 I had attende fther AKA convention ansd when the auction came on Sunday night I had only one priorty: gert the winning gulalris and pair of dward reds and cross them to see what happens. As far as I can tell no0body else has ever doen this or if they did didn't document it. PErhaps I missed it and would love toi be corrected. But here's whast I found. I'd love to say that I bred hundreds of these but in Los ANgeles atr the time I was breeding these I had terrible egg fertility proboems and ewass onky getting a 2% rate of rertility; when I Was a kid it was more like 85-95% wich La Corte (pers comms) confirms as normal. In the end it ruernd oiut tyo be a micronuti9rnet deficiency - selenium - becauese I hadn't botherred to feedc bloodworms, the onkly fish fooid that has ajny selenium in it naturaklly. Thiurs turns outr to be vital fior siome killies (A. kunzi I'm looking at you). So I Was at best able to raise 30 fish one time; a large male, the fish the wond the AKA class that year (1988), whcih came from Paul Christ and the fzame came from Szarenekck. I Wasn't expecingt much, I fuigued they'd all look like reguylsr SJO and maybe one might hsow more orange. Wrong. These things were all over the place. Soke were larger than a reguylar gularis, some were smaller. Some loked distinclty greenish, others were varuous shades or normal gularis colors, one looked like the deep blue easter egg dipped form Paul Hoppe was famous for in the 1960s - and won evbery gular class art the AKA for a decade. He was knocked off the shelf by Ed MIkkelson who then won every year; While JMiekelsons fish didn't have that sold blue pigment Hoppe's did, they were outstanding fisn in their own right, the first utterrly flawless gularis I'[d seen - and they got big as well as having intense color. I've never done any large scsle crossing of strained which poeple like Mike Epperson and Byron THornon have so I can't spoeak from experience here but I gather that when crosing two strtains og hulsrois I imagien you get pretty much all the same fish - more or less. ANything radicaly different you'd see at a show! So upon reflectiojn tio do find 9it rathger odd that the progeny fgrom that one corss I made were of the "no two look like" spookiness that to me indiczted genetic dissimilarity. I'd love to be able to say that all we have to do is examein gthe DNA of Szafrencks fish and we'll know how much of a sxpeccvies ort not it is, but that isn't goign to work out. Just about thye time we were getting good with Killi DNA, ata round the time Collier and Murphey were doing a alrghe sdale analyushyis of killifisg genomes, the last of Szafrekcns fish were qwuietly fading in to oblivion. It seems unliekly to me somebody has one of Szafre3ncks fish tucked awau in the frezer or preserved in alhocol and not formalin (wh ci destoys dna) for fuirtherr analysis and this is a crying shame. Robert DeKeulenaere My understanding is that the true Dwarf Red came into the hobby many years ago. Per the AKA website "The dwarf red variety was introduced into the AKA in 1969 by Mr. Jue. The exact origin of this strain is unknown." This is a great question and we discussed this before. I currently have 2 different strains of "Dwarf Red". My original strain was obtained from the late Jacquie Kostich. Beautiful fish which as they mature develop a tri-lobed tail and get rather large. These could be another wild type location as you suggest or a strain created from 2 or more different strains. My understanding is that a true Dwarf Red does not develop a tri-lobe tail. I also have a Czech Dwarf Red strain that I am currently growing out. These, so far, exhibit no indication of a tri-lobe tail and appear to be smaller for their age. It will be interesting to see how they turn out. Seeing how Mr. Jue introduced this strain 57 years ago, their origin whether from a wild location or something he created via a breeding experiment is probably lost in the annals of time. Further complicating the matter is our inability to explore the area of SW Africa where Blue Gularis are found due to the dangerous instability from terrorism, piracy, military coups, violence etc. The last commercial import of Blue Gularis was in 2021 from the Oteri area (both you and I had these) and the person who collected and exported them to the US was murdered 3 months after he shipped the fish out of Africa. Until stability & safety returns to that portion of Africa it is not safe or worth risking your life to collect wild Blue Gularis. A very unfortunate situation as I believe there are wild strains of Blue Gularis there that have yet to be discovered and described. Sorry for the rambling, but for the time being until we know more maybe we should just refer to the so-called Dwarf Reds that grow large and exhibit a tri-lobe tail as an aquarium strain to not further complicate the matter with yet another name. Aye and there's the rub! That tail. It's always goign to be trilobate, but I have to admit, after lookijng at every red dwarf photo I can, they all sedem trilobate to me, cept for one, the tiny bugger I bought in 1998. It had a tail more liek amieti than SJO but I thinik now that perhaps the fish was just stunted and may just have been a cull. The thijnhg is, the fish that dislpayed this train was from Szafrenekc's stock, and all other photos of his fish do show a trilobate tail. I do not think there was a second strain of dwarf reds. Kostick has Szakrenekc fish, so does Thornton as of 2021. This is the fisdh in question, the last of an everr increasdingoly smaller example of Szafreneks dwark red that had been around since the 70s. It's good to sde other poeple have been diligent in keepoing this strain going. The fish behing it is a "DKG Blue" fish, which are about 2/3 to 1/2 asx big as a large US Gularis, so you can see how small that Dwarf red is. We're talking Aphyosemion sized here, so I think nbow it's just stunted and that while dwarf red doesn't evern get finextensions that tails will always have a erecogniozable trilovba patten of sdome sort - pleasse correct me if I'm wrong. It'sx fair to dsay they have a less pronounced tail but it's waleysz gulsaris shaped. Real ones will also have orange int he p4ecfs, nwvewr white or bolue and oranmge in the anak fin. The thing is these fish can be found in nature in the sasme stream as the blue iones, at least in the Warii area of ther Nigerr Delta. So what I'd like to know is what doeds genetic analysis show wlr.t the diccerenc ebetwen a partuicuklarly ornmage fish fromi Warri or the niger delta, and Szafrnekc ds fish now mainteind as maintisane dby Kostuicjk and THoirnoitin? As to what to call this current fish Mike you raise a good point, red they are dwarf they aint. It's noty red it's orange. Call them orange gularis. This also fifferentiserd them handiuoty from the Cameron streains that have no oramgem, but have violet instead.