[Peter Finke]

To me the fish looks very much like P. spec. Sentang (“sintangensis”) from Sumatra. Definitely it is none of the species from western Malaysia, and probably it’s none of the well-know species and variants from Kalimantan and certainly not from Sarawak. There are many bintan-like variants living on Sumatra. P. spec. Sentang is one of the most-caught and most-exported licorice gouramis of the last two or three years. In that respect, it’s predecessor was P. “blue line”, equally from Sumatra, which has been exported in high quantities. Obviously, the share of the catches fell sharply after 2008, and the Sentang form replaced them in the lists of the exporters. They tried to push the fish by naming them with the latinized “sintangensis”-name which is invalid since it is not based on any serious description. As it is the case with many other licorice gouramis, many people don’t bother with the distinctions between species and variants and simply call them all the most prominent and oldest name “deissneri”. Martin wrote correctly that this fish is definitely not of that species from Bangka; the true deissneri is simply and clearly to be identified (see our species account). Unfortunately, our scheduled pages in this website on the hitherto scientifically unidentified “other forms” are not ready to be publicized; therefore all the Sumatra variants of bintan-like fish (as spec. Sentang or spec. “blue line” or spec. Dabo or spec. Sungai Bertam etc.) are presently not described systematically anywhere in publications or the web.