Taxonomy & naming
Cyphocharax punctatus was described by Richard P. Vari and Han Nijssen in 1986. It sits in the genus Cyphocharax within the family Curimatidae, part of the broader superfamily of characins that also contains the piranhas and pacus (Serrasalmidae) within the order Characiformes — but curimatids are a wholly different lineage, lacking the bladed dentition of their more famous relatives and instead specialising in fine substrate grazing. The Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer, California Academy of Sciences) is the governing authority for the valid name and combination used here.
The species is known from the Marowijne River basin, which straddles the Suriname–French Guiana border, and available records treat it as effectively endemic to that drainage. Little taxonomic literature beyond the original description and subsequent regional faunal treatments has been located for this account; the cache used to write this article did not surface a dedicated revision or phylogenetic study of C. punctatus specifically.
Morphology
Cyphocharax punctatus is a small fish, with FishBase citing a maximum recorded standard length of just 1.5 in — placing it among the smaller members of a genus that is itself made up of modestly sized, unremarkable-looking curimatids. Like other members of the family, it has the generic slender-to-moderately-deep, laterally compressed body plan of a small grazing characin, a small toothless or near-toothless mouth adapted for sifting fine material rather than biting, and no elaborate finnage or colour pattern reported in the sources available.
Detailed morphometric description beyond the FishBase summary was not found in the cache for this species; readers should treat any finer anatomical claims as data sparse rather than assume they mirror better-documented congeners such as C. multilineatus.
Habitat
This species occurs in the Marowijne River basin of the Guianas, a South American drainage shared by Suriname and French Guiana. FishBase describes it as benthopelagic, occurring in extensive shoals over sand or mud substrate in tributaries and in inundated creek areas with little current — the classic still-water and slow-flow margins that curimatids favour for grazing on the fine organic layer coating the bottom.
Specific water chemistry data (temperature, pH, hardness) for C. punctatus was not located in the cache. Based on the genus and the lowland Guiana Shield setting, conditions are likely warm and soft-to-neutral, consistent with other Neotropical floodplain and blackwater-influenced systems in the region, but this article does not assert precise figures it cannot source.
Feeding
Cyphocharax punctatus is not documented with a species-specific diet study in the sources available, but the genus is well characterised: curimatids including Cyphocharax are omnivorous detritivores and grazers, working aufwuchs, algae, biofilm and fine organic detritus off stones, roots and sediment, occasionally taking small invertebrates encountered while grazing. There is no indication anywhere in the genus of predatory or fin-nipping behaviour — this is a quiet, bottom-and-midwater grazing fish, not a hunter.
In the unlikely event of aquarium care, a diet built around this ecology — sinking algae wafers, spirulina-based foods and fine detritivore pellets, supplemented with occasional small live or frozen foods — would be the sensible extrapolation from the genus, though no aquarium feeding record for this exact species was found.
Mating
No courtship or pairing behaviour has been documented for Cyphocharax punctatus in the sources available. Nothing in the cache indicates external sexual dimorphism for this species, and no genus-wide account of visible sex differences in Cyphocharax was found either. This is genuinely unknown territory rather than an oversight — small, commercially unimportant curimatids from a single river basin rarely attract the observational effort that produces courtship descriptions.
Breeding
There is no record of Cyphocharax punctatus being bred in captivity, and no field description of its spawning behaviour was found in the cache. It should not be assumed to follow any particular mode — piranhas nest-guard, pacus and migratory food fish are farmed under hormone induction, and silver dollars scatter eggs over plants, but none of that maps directly onto a small, undocumented curimatid, and this account will not guess.
Given that curimatids in general are unremarkable open-water or substrate egg-scatterers with no parental care where they have been studied, that is the most plausible mode by analogy — but it is an inference from the family, not a documented fact for this species, and should be read as such.
In the aquarium
Cyphocharax punctatus does not appear to be established in the aquarium hobby. No dedicated care guide was located on SeriouslyFish or comparable hobbyist references, and the species is best treated as effectively unavailable in the trade. Related Cyphocharax species, such as C. multilineatus, do turn up occasionally as minor imports and give a rough sense of what care might look like: a peaceful, shoaling, sand- or fine-gravel-bottomed setup with driftwood and roots to graze, kept in a group rather than alone, alongside other calm South American community fish.
Given its small adult size (around 1.5–2 in), a modest tank would in principle suffice for a shoal, but with no confirmed husbandry record for this exact species, anyone who does encounter it in the trade should treat available care information as extrapolated from the genus rather than proven for C. punctatus itself.
Conservation
Cyphocharax punctatus has not been evaluated by the IUCN Red List — no dedicated assessment exists for this species at this time, so its conservation status is formally Not Evaluated rather than a documented category of concern or safety. This is a common situation for narrow-range curimatids restricted to a single river basin outside the major commercial or aquarium fisheries.
Its apparent endemism to the Marowijne basin, shared by Suriname and French Guiana, means that any pressures affecting that drainage — small-scale gold mining and associated sedimentation/mercury contamination, deforestation, and water-quality change are documented regional concerns for Guiana Shield rivers generally — would be the relevant long-term watch items, though no species-specific population or threat assessment was found in the sources used for this account.