Fishes removed from the list of cave and groundwater fishes

Cobitis damlae Erkakan and Özdemir 2014 (Cypriniformes: Cobitidae)

This was apparently the first European cave fish but it seems that its pigementless condition was a result of albinism and it has completely normal eyes. Also, there don't appear to be any subterranean habitats near to where it was found. Freyhof et al. (2018) discuss these issues and place the species into Cobitis fahireae.

Pangasius undescribed species (Siluriformes: Pangasiidae)

An apparently troglomorphic (eyeless and depigmented) and undescribed species of Pangasiidae was bought from a pet store in Malaysia. Eventually all specimens died and the "owner" was unable to locate anymore. The original location of these animals was not known. Thorough investigations, and communications with Malaysian ichthyologists, has determined that in all probability the fishes were artificially reared albinos and that their eye-loss was probably due to predation on the eye tissue by other fishes. When this happens the eye sockets grow skin over them. So the apparent troglomorphisms were no such thing.  Thanks to Tan Heok Hui (heokhui@nus.edu.sg) for clarifying this situtation. His rapid response with this answer has saved a lot of people a lot of time and effort in location the original population of cave fishes in a country with much limestone in 445 individual limestone hills (Liew et al. 2016)!

Aenigmachanna mahabali Kumar, Basheer and Ravi 2019 (Anabantiformes: Aenigmachannidae)

Genetic and distributional evidence strongly suggests that this species is a synonym of Aenigmachanna gollum Britz, Anoop, Dahanukar and Raghavan 2019 (Raghavan et al. 2022).