Am I Synodontis njassae?

[Jools]

These two pics were submitted for the catelog, as

Synodontis njassae

. The patterning appears to extend to the belly, the barbles are not white and the adipose fin looks too long. However, I am not that familiar with this species, anyone else wish to comment.

It would be helpful if you could describe why you agree or disagree and indeed suggest what species it might be.

Cheers,

Jools

[sidguppy]

the drawn picture might be, but the photographed pictures of the fish?

I don't think so.

it's grossly fat, but that might happen to any Syno, Syno's being the gluttons that they are.
I still think that an elongated fish like Synodontis njassae might develop a "pott belly" like an overfed Synodontis brichardi.
not turn into this.
this looks like of those nigrita/robbianus/obesus things, but I suspect it has njassae in its ancestry.

the belly may be patterned in njassae (I'm not so sure about it), but not much, very little if anything.
and the barbels are white.


edit I just checked my small stack of njassae pix and all of those have white bellies.....
the drawing also shows a fish without any pattern on the belly.

[Jools]

SG,

As undernoted, the drawing is from Poll and is S. njassae, sorry if that was misleading. The reason I ask is that the fish doesn't look like any of the usual suspects (e.g

Synodontis nigrita

or

Synodontis robbianus

) to me, nor does it look like a hybrid.

There are more pics here: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =8&t=23815 , I think the "small spot" is something else again...

Jools

[sidguppy]

damn!

now it gets confusing indeed

when I posted in that thread I was as stated fairly convinced that the fish was a genuine njasaae although a very fat and dark onew

and when today I saw your post here the first impression was "hybrid".

well, tells you 1 thing; I make mistakes

still I think -now that is! that this fish is not genuine. I'll correct it in the other topic soon.

the reason why I changed my mind?
recently I've seen genuine njassae in the trade. they look a LOT like my old pictures and not at all like the fish here.

also, today I made the effort to check on my photo stash; something I should have done the last time as well but didn't

my bad!

[Chrysichthys]

On the 'north of M25' trip, Richard B., MatsP and I saw what Richard says was a genuine njassae. I recall it looked more like the drawings than the photos, but Richard's opinion would be more useful than mine (if he's reading this).

[Birger]

this looks like of those nigrita/robbianus/obesus things,

In my books I keep going back to rebeli...in Polls book I picked the humeral process right off the page without looking at the names, seems close and I sure would like a close look at the mouth, so yes better pictures are needed.

I still think that an elongated fish like Synodontis njassae might develop a "pott belly" like an overfed Synodontis brichardi.
not turn into this.

I agree with this as well, you do not see too many large(obese) lake syno's, whether it is the physiology or their active lifestyle or both that does it.

[Richard B]

On the 'north of M25' trip, Richard B., MatsP and I saw what Richard says was a genuine njassae. I recall it looked more like the drawings than the photos, but Richard's opinion would be more useful than mine (if he's reading this).

The (not-very-good) pic i have on my phone (of the fish mentioned above) seems to show a pale ventral area, not spotted.

Personally i have no definitive opinion on these - i think it may well be a genuine species, but

is

it njassae? (i think it can be the former without being the latter) i think Malawi has a few unrevealled surprises for us. If this individual was good enough to cloud the judgment of Sidguppy originally, it is close to njassae - are we seeing a situation close to tanganyika with unidentified species surfacing? Petricola/lucipinnis/ilebrevis or multipunctatus/grandiops type-of-situation? We have over time become familiar with Petricola & lucipnnis but ilebrevis remains a species seldom if at all encountered. Malawi is also a massive body of water which may yet have serets to reveal - this is only my hypothesis but the fish is not like any hybrid i have yet encountered (& unfortunately i have seen a lot) - there is no crooked dorsal, no dip in the "shoulder" area which many hybrid fish exhibit.

Many people think multipunctatus/grandiops have unspotted bellies - what i know is that i have seen & kept definate wild caught fish with some spotting on the bellies - perhaps this could also be true in malawi synos?

Further questions would be how old are these fish - what size are they? They look adult & some 6-8" which means they must be quite old - & therefore in australia for quite some time. If this is a hybrid - why has this variety not been seen in the US or UK/Europe which is a bigger market?

In summation, i am keeping the book open on this one.....

[Breezer]

Further questions would be how old are these fish - what size are they? They look adult & some 6-8" which means they must be quite old - & therefore in australia for quite some time. If this is a hybrid - why has this variety not been seen in the US or UK/Europe which is a bigger market?

In summation, i am keeping the book open on this one.....

That particular one was between 5-6" as was the rest of the group, the small spot ones were around the 7".
I'm going through the pics i have currently have which aren't too many and will post the best shots up later on.

Thanks

[Breezer]

Ok, well this may not work, these are just pics taken of the colony, you can tell they are not the same individual fish, but seem to me to be same species. Either way i'm going to get some more pics over the coming days of them all.
Sorry about all this.

[Breezer]

this is one of the other pics off the other thread. I suspected this one was gravid at the time.

and this pic was also in the other thread. It's pretty much how the rest of them looked apart from the suspected gravid girls.

Sorry, one of our friends has the fish in question so it'll take me a few days to get newer more precise pics.