Taxonomy & naming
Cyphocharax lundi was described in 2016 by Dutra, Penido, Guimarães de Mello & Pessali in Zootaxa (4103(2):154–164), alongside a second new species, from headwaters of the Jequitinhonha and São Francisco river basins in Minas Gerais, Brazil; the type material came from the Rio das Velhas drainage. It was placed in Cyphocharax, a genus of small grazing characins in the family Curimatidae, within the order Characiformes — the same order that contains the true piranhas and pacus covered elsewhere in this atlas, but a very different ecological role within it.
The taxonomic story did not end with the description. In 2017, a follow-up paper (also indexed via PubMed and Zootaxa) resurrected the older name Curimatus albula Lütken, 1874 — originally described from Ribeirão da Mata at Lagoa Santa, a tributary of the Rio das Velhas in the same São Francisco basin — and demonstrated that Cyphocharax lundi was a junior synonym of it, describing effectively the same population under a newer name barely a year after its own publication. This kind of rapid synonymisation is common in poorly sampled Neotropical basins, where a species can be independently "discovered" twice from populations only a river bend apart. This article uses the name Cyphocharax lundi as requested and as it still appears in some taxonomic databases and literature, while flagging that Catalog of Fishes users should be aware Curimatus albula is treated as the senior, valid name for the same fish.
Morphology
Cyphocharax lundi has not been the subject of aquarium-literature measurement, and no maximum length figure for it specifically could be confirmed from available sources — a gap this article states outright rather than estimating. What is well documented for the genus is its general body plan: Cyphocharax species are laterally compressed, silvery, moderately deep-bodied fish with a small, subterminal or slightly underslung mouth adapted for scraping rather than biting, no adipose-fin dentition of note, and none of the piranha-family's blade-like teeth — curimatids as a group lack functional jaw teeth entirely, relying instead on pharyngeal structures to process the fine organic material they graze. Expect a modest, unremarkable silver characin rather than anything approaching pacu or piranha proportions.
Habitat
The type locality for Cyphocharax lundi (and for its senior synonym Curimatus albula) sits in the headwaters of the Rio das Velhas, a tributary of the Rio São Francisco in Minas Gerais, Brazil — an upland Brazilian drainage rather than the classic Amazonian lowland floodplain. More broadly, the genus Cyphocharax is distributed across the Amazon, Orinoco and Paraná basins of South America, and its members are typically found in slow-moving water — swamps, floodplain lakes and vegetated backwaters — rather than fast current.
Genus-level water chemistry data (drawn from the related, better-documented Cyphocharax multilineatus) points to soft, mildly acidic to neutral conditions, roughly pH 5.5–7.5 and 73–81 °F, consistent with vegetated Neotropical lowland and upland streams. Site-specific water chemistry for the Rio das Velhas population of C. lundi itself was not found in the available sources; treat the genus-level range as a reasonable but unconfirmed proxy.
Feeding
Curimatids, including Cyphocharax, are grazers rather than predators or omnivores in the piranha-family sense: they feed by scraping algae, biofilm and organic detritus from submerged wood, rock and sediment, a diet reflected in their toothless, scraping mouth and long gut typical of detritivorous fish. This places C. lundi in the same broad feeding guild as Prochilodus and the other "minor characin" grazers covered in this atlas — quiet, continuous foragers rather than fish that hunt, shred plants or scavenge carrion.
No aquarium feeding record exists for this species specifically. A keeper working from the genus norm would offer a diet built around algae wafers, blanched vegetable matter, spirulina-based foods and fine sinking pellets, with live or frozen foods as a minor supplement rather than a staple — but this is an inference from Cyphocharax generally, not a documented account of C. lundi in captivity.
Mating
No courtship or spawning-behaviour data for Cyphocharax lundi were found in the available sources. The species has essentially no footprint in aquarium or aquaculture literature, and nothing about pairing, colour changes, or pre-spawning behaviour could be confirmed. This account does not speculate beyond that.
Breeding
There is no confirmed breeding record for Cyphocharax lundi in the aquarium or in aquaculture. Curimatids as a family are not known for parental care, and where breeding has been documented in related grazing characins it typically takes the form of open-water egg-scattering with no guarding of eggs or fry — but this is a family-level generalisation, not a fact established for this species, and it should not be read as confirmation that C. lundi breeds this way in practice. Given the total absence of hobby-breeding reports, the honest summary is that this species is essentially unknown in captive reproduction.
In the aquarium
Cyphocharax lundi is not an established aquarium fish — the available sources return no hobby care sheets, no import records and no aquarium-trade presence for this species. It is included here as part of a taxonomic and biogeographic record of the São Francisco basin's minor characins, not as a species a keeper should expect to find or plan a tank around.
Anyone encountering this fish (most plausibly under an aquarium-trade label for undifferentiated Cyphocharax "flying fox" or curimatid imports, since misidentified generic imports are common in this genus) should treat it as a peaceful, schooling grazer needing clean, well-oxygenated, moderately soft-to-neutral water, a group of its own kind, and algae-forward feeding, following the genus-level pattern described above — while recognising that species-specific husbandry data simply does not exist yet.
Conservation
No IUCN Red List assessment exists for Cyphocharax lundi (or for its senior synonym Curimatus albula); the species has not been evaluated, which the Red List codes as Not Evaluated rather than a form of protected or threatened status. This is unremarkable for a narrowly distributed, recently described headwater fish from a basin — the Rio São Francisco system in Minas Gerais — that has not been comprehensively surveyed for conservation status. Its native range is inland Brazil and it faces the general pressures common to Minas Gerais headwater streams (deforestation, agricultural runoff and damming), but no species-specific assessment of population trend or threat level was found.