Distribution:
To date the species is known mostly from the upper Ayeyarwady River basin in northern Myanmar where it’s been collected close to the city of Myitkyina in Kachin State as well as around nearby Lake Indawgyi, the largest inland lake in Southeast Asia and home to ten globally threatened bird species.
The lake and surrounding area were designated a protected zone by the Ministry of Ecotourism in 1999 and now form the Indawgyi Lake Wildlife Sanctuary.
Kachin State itself is one of the world’s great biodiversity hotspots and contains many endemic species although large portions of the area have been decimated due to illegal logging by both Myanmar and neighbouring China.
In 1983 a single adult female specimen was purchased from a market in the city of Mandalay, several hundred kilometres further south and also located within the Ayeyarwady drainage, meaning the full extent of its range remains unknown but may comprise much of the upper-to-middle Ayeyarwaddy.
Type locality is given as ‘Muddy stream along Kamaing Jade Mines Road, Kamaing, Myitkyina District, Upper Myanmar’.
Habitat:
The type series was collected from ‘small, muddy streams’ but little additional information exists.
Presumably it spends much of its time among submerged or marginal vegetation and prefers slow-moving or standing water.
Water Conditions:
Temperature: This species is subject to seasonal temperature fluctuations in nature and is comfortable between 15 – 25 °C with even greater extremes being tolerated for short periods.
pH: 6.5 – 7.5
Hardness: 90 – 179 ppm
Reference:
https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/parasphaerichthys-ocellatus/
