The Chilodidae, or headstanders, are a small family of freshwater

characiform Characiformes is an order of Actinopterygii, ray-finned fish, comprising the characins and their allies. Grouped in 18 recognized families, more than 2000 different species are described, including the well-known piranha and tetras.; Buckup P.A ...

fishes found in northern and central

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. This family is closely related to the family

Anostomidae The Anostomidae are a family of ray-finned fishes that belong to the order Characiformes. Closely related to the Chilodidae and formerly included with them, the Anostomidae contain about 150 described species. Commonly known as anostomids, they ...

and is sometimes treated as a subfamily, Chilodinae, within Anostomidae. This family was formerly referred to as "Chilodontidae". Due to issues of homonymy with two other family-rank names called "Chilodontidae", the fish family was required to change spelling to Chilodidae.Opinion 2502 (Case 3555) – Chilodontidae Bronn, 1859 (Ciliophora), Chilodontinae Eigenmann, 1910 (Pisces, Characiformes) and Chilodontinae Wenz, 1938 (Mollusca, Gastropoda): homonymy between family-group names resolved. The Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 81(1): 133-136 (31 December 2024) doi:10.21805/bzn.v81.a025 Chilodids have colourful markings, making them popular in

aquarium An aquarium (: aquariums or aquaria) is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. fishkeeping, Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aquati ...

s. They are small fish, all less than in adult length, and are distinguished by their habitual head-down postures.

Genera

This family currently contains two genera: * Genus '' Caenotropus'' Günther, 1864 (4 species) * Genus '' Chilodus''

Müller Müller may refer to: Companies * Müller (company), a German multinational dairy company ** Müller Milk & Ingredients, a UK subsidiary of the German company * Müller (store), a German retail chain * GMD Müller, a Swiss aerial lift manufacturi ...

& Troschel, 1844 (4 species)

References

Fish of South America Characiformes families Taxa named by Carl H. Eigenmann {{Characiformes-stub