Taxonomy & naming
Micronema cheveyi was described by the French ichthyologist Marcel Durand in 1940, with a type locality on the Kaskor River in Cambodia. It belongs to the family Siluridae, the sheatfishes and glass catfishes of Europe, Africa and Asia, and to the genus Kryptopterus, whose members range from the small, transparent glass catfish popular in the aquarium trade to larger, more heavily built river species. The Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer, CAS) lists Micronema cheveyi as the valid name.
The genus name Kryptopterus comes from the Greek kryptos, "hidden", and pteron, "wing" or "fin" — a reference to the reduced or near-absent dorsal fin shared across the genus, most obvious in the transparent glass catfishes. The specific epithet cheveyi most likely honours a collector or naturalist associated with the original French Indochina survey work, though a documented etymology for the epithet was not found in the sources consulted here.
This fish was long listed as Kryptopterus cheveyi; Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes places the species in Micronema, and the current combination Micronema cheveyi is followed here.
Morphology
Micronema cheveyi is a moderately elongated, laterally compressed catfish reaching a reported maximum of 13.8 in total length (FishBase) — considerably larger than the well-known aquarium glass catfishes such as K. vitreolus or K. bicirrhis. Like other members of the genus it has a reduced dorsal fin, a long-based anal fin, and a forked caudal fin, with barbels used to sense food in the murky or fast-flowing water it inhabits.
As in all Siluriformes the skin is naked and scaleless, which has direct implications for aquarium and fishery handling: scaleless catfish are notably more sensitive to copper-based medications and many standard treatments, so dosing needs to be conservative wherever this fish or its relatives are kept. Adults of this size and build are not the see-through fish associated with the trade name "glass catfish"; that transparency is most pronounced in the smaller species of the genus.
Habitat
The species is native to the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basins of mainland Southeast Asia, with records from Cambodia and Thailand. It is a freshwater, benthopelagic fish, occupying rivers, canals and seasonally flooded fields — the classic habitat mosaic of the Mekong floodplain, where fish move between the main river channel and inundated rice land as water levels rise and fall with the monsoon.
Specific water chemistry data (pH, hardness) were not captured in the sources consulted for this article. As a floodplain river species of the Mekong and Chao Phraya systems, it experiences warm, seasonally fluctuating tropical freshwater rather than the stable conditions of a lake.
Feeding
Micronema cheveyi feeds on aquatic invertebrates and small fish. Documented diet items include chironomid (midge) and ephemeropteran (mayfly) larvae, zooplankton, and small fishes, indicating a fish that forages actively in open water and along the substrate rather than specialising narrowly on one prey type.
This diet places it as a mid-level predator within the Mekong floodplain food web, taking advantage of the seasonal pulse of invertebrate and larval-fish production that follows the flood cycle.
Mating
No spawning behaviour specific to Micronema cheveyi was found in the sources consulted. Glass and sheatfish catfishes of this genus are not established aquarium breeders; the limited information available for related Kryptopterus species points to spawning tied to the monsoon flood pulse, likely triggered by rising water and rainfall, but this has not been documented for cheveyi itself.
Breeding
Micronema cheveyi is not bred in captivity. It is not part of the aquarium trade at all — it is a commercial food fish, sold fresh or smoked in local Mekong and Chao Phraya river fisheries, and the supply is entirely wild-caught. Closely related smaller glass catfishes that are kept in aquaria (such as K. vitreolus) are themselves only very rarely spawned in captivity, with no consistent home-breeding method published; for a large, non-ornamental river species like cheveyi there is no aquarium breeding record to draw on at all.
In the aquarium
Micronema cheveyi is not an aquarium fish. FishBase records it as a commercial fishery species sold fresh or smoked, not as an import for the hobby, and at a reported maximum of 13.8 in total length it would in any case outgrow essentially every home tank — the size trap that catches keepers who assume any "glass catfish" stays small like the popular K. vitreolus. Anyone encountering this species should recognise it as a food fish of Mekong river communities rather than a candidate for the tank.
Where the genus does turn up in aquaria (via smaller relatives), the same husbandry cautions apply: a scaleless, naked-skinned catfish is sensitive to copper and many medications, so any dosing must be conservative. Species in this genus also carry the typical catfish fin-spine caution — netting can tangle stiff spines and stress or injure the fish — though this is moot for a species that is not kept in the trade.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Micronema cheveyi as Data Deficient, reflecting limited targeted study of the species' population trends despite its presence in commercial fisheries. It is caught and sold within Mekong and Chao Phraya river fisheries in Cambodia and Thailand.
As with many Mekong basin fishes, the pressures relevant to this species are the pressures on the river system as a whole: damming and altered flow regimes, floodplain habitat loss, and fishing pressure across the basin's mixed commercial fisheries. No species-specific conservation programme was found in the sources consulted.