Callichthys callichthys

[Marc van Arc]

Last week I tipped Sidguppy that Dutch wholesaler Ruinemans apparently had

Callichthys callichthys

(C.c.). Apparently, for the last time I ordered a fish under that name it turned out to be

Lepthoplosternum pectorale

. Despite it thus being a kind of gamble, he ordered some via an LFS in Den Bosch and they were indeed Cc. He was very pleased for he had not seen them since 1992!
I ordered as well via that LFS and today - after a very nice evening meal with class 3GA and some collegues at a local Chinese restaurant - I went to Den Bosch to pick them up. I have got 2 males and 3 females, which are divided into the two smaller tanks (one pair and one trio). In due course they will go into the large tank. Here are some pictures of them, straight after their release.

[MatsP]

Congratulations. I sincerely hope you have more luck than I've had with them... I'm cursed when it comes to keeping Cc. That and shrimp - most other things I seem to manage reasonably well...

--
Mats

[DJ-don]

those look amazing
maybe you can even try spawning them!!

[Carp37]

Congrats Marc- my Callichthys are among my favourite fish, alongside Distichodus affinis. They are real characters, especially as they like to rest in plain sight (usually in the open right at the front of the tank), often on top of each other- they're very social but non-aggressive. They're also REALLY excitable at feeding time, but they don't beg quite as incessantly as hoplos do. Hope you enjoy yours!

[sidguppy]

we had a bit of bad luck here

today I found 1 female dead (we bought 4 males and 4 females) and another one (ofcourse another female!) is in bad shape; very thin and all the fins squeezed tight.

the rest was increasingly stressed, so I did a big waterchange rightaway

maybe it's the high pH we got here that causes all the trouble....wich is hard to fix; our tapwater is about 8 and it's strongly buffered.
in time they'll go into a big tank with lots of wood, but now they're still in quarantaine.

I have very bad experience with not quarantaining wildcaught fish, so I didn't dare to gamble

Mats, what happened with your Callichthys?
maybe it's a list of symptomes I have to keep an eye out for.

[Birger]

today I found 1 female dead (we bought 4 males and 4 females) and another one (ofcourse another female!) is in bad shape; very thin and all the fins squeezed tight.

Ouch...that is too bad, how are Marc's doing.

[MatsP]

Mats, what happened with your Callichthys?
maybe it's a list of symptomes I have to keep an eye out for.

Mine looked fine one day, and turned up "resting at the top of the tank" the next day. They were indeed in high pH in this tank, but they lived in Richard B's tank in high pH for a few months (November or December to late March). My water is high in nitrate [1], which may have affected something, but I didn't think these fish were particularly sensitive to "dirty" water.

The first pair, I'm 90% sure got attacked by my Ancistrus that they were cohabiting with - this was a soft water tank, so pH and nitrate would not have been a problem, but I suspect in a fight over cave-space, the Ancistrus would win over a Callichthys, and the reactions/behaviour may not work in the Callichthys favour either - the Ancistrus would keep the fish trapped in the cave and the Callichthys having less defensive weapons, it's not a "fair battle". In nature, I expect these would not meet very often, as they have different habitat.

[1] Around 30-35 ppm, as they were in the waste-water from the RO system - which produces enough water that my 4 x 100 liter tanks get about 3-4x tank volume water changes per week.

[Carp37]

Mats, what happened with your Callichthys?
maybe it's a list of symptomes I have to keep an eye out for.

Mine looked fine one day, and turned up "resting at the top of the tank" the next day. They were indeed in high pH in this tank, but they lived in Richard B's tank in high pH for a few months (November or December to late March). My water is high in nitrate [1], which may have affected something, but I didn't think these fish were particularly sensitive to "dirty" water.

The first pair, I'm 90% sure got attacked by my Ancistrus that they were cohabiting with - this was a soft water tank, so pH and nitrate would not have been a problem, but I suspect in a fight over cave-space, the Ancistrus would win over a Callichthys, and the reactions/behaviour may not work in the Callichthys favour either - the Ancistrus would keep the fish trapped in the cave and the Callichthys having less defensive weapons, it's not a "fair battle". In nature, I expect these would not meet very often, as they have different habitat.

[1] Around 30-35 ppm, as they were in the waste-water from the RO system - which produces enough water that my 4 x 100 liter tanks get about 3-4x tank volume water changes per week.

I'm pretty sure high nitrate isn't a short-term issue for these fish- mine are in water that hovers around the 50ppm mark, or even higher, on water-change day, due to my somewhat poor stock management (longer term it might be a health issue- I've had mine about 27 months now). Mats' suggestion that a Callichthys might view a cave as a suitable home sounds plausible; Callichthys certainly seem to lack any offensive potential whatsoever (beyond sitting on a fish), but they can set off fairly strongly if disturbed and I'd have thought a similar-sized Ancistrus would have its hands full keeping one cornered in a cave. I'm not sure about the pH issue- mine's about 6.4-6.6; the GH is quite high (8 to 16 degrees on a strip) but KH very low (0-3 degrees). However, mine weren't wild-caught fish, so could possibly be a bit less choosy in terms of water parameters.

[Marc van Arc]

how are Marc's doing.

No problem whatsoever.
If he gets everything under control (which he will ime), Alex can have my "spare" female to make his group more balanced.

[sidguppy]

tnx for that offer, marc, and IF the countdown stops, we'll make use of it; but for now we have to keep our fingers crossed.....

it'll be a miracle if the 6 remaining (yup, lost another female) will stay alive.

they are very active, a bit too active for our liking.
they feed allright, but stay very very thin. hollow is the word.
I think we just had a bad batch, al least with the females.

i can't for the life imagine what is happening. we used an antibiotic because when they gotout of the bag, the water was really filthy.

and after 1 week we did the anti gillfluke/intestine worm dip.
now they're in the big tank since saturday, no other fish in there.

waterparameters are: temp 23-24'C, GH hardiness 11, KH 2, pH about 7.5-8.

if this turns into another disaster, I'll close the book on this species. it would be way beyond a mere disappointmentif after such a long time (20 years!) we end up with a pile of dead fish.

[Carp37]

they are very active, a bit too active for our liking.
they feed allright, but stay very very thin. hollow is the word.

Them staying "hollow" doesn't sound right at all- mine are extremely active at feeding time, but it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes for them to get full as they seem to have got quite a short stomach/body cavity area. Whilst it's not a great photo, the bottom one I posted of one of the females shows the stomach area being markedly convex- that's nearly a day since she was last fed. Mine are also fairly inactive apart from at feeding time, but they were more active when they were younger.

They are particularly fond of bloodworm, but like hoplos are particularly unfussy about food, other than that they seem to need food to be either soft or very small- even very small hard catfish pellets (about 2mmX4mm) give them problems- they chew these for ages, but presoaked floating pellets get swallowed OK.

Best of luck with them- fingers crossed!

[sidguppy]

just came home from work to find the largest male dead as yesterday's mutton


this is not going to be good, I tell you.

my mate to whom the Callichthys belong - he's the one with the South American biotope tank, as I stick to keeping Madagascar and African Rift fish- is not happy at all...

I'm stumped. THIS one was feeding well, the waters good, but hes dead

the others have hidden, I can see 2, but they're not behaving the normal way at all.

[sidguppy]

another day, another dead Callichthys.

50% bodycount so far. wich is very very bad

the rest behaves completely weird; they're doing their stinking best to get out of the water......resting on the filter outlet and on top of the higest pieces of wood

the waterparameters are still fine, as far as i can check.
I'm totally stumped

and i dare not to move them to any other tank; because the other tanks all have fish in them. if it's a killer germ i definitely do not want to finish the entire hobby........nor mine, nor Patrick's (he's the one who owns the callichthys)

the quarantaine tank where the fish stayed for the first week (and where the first 2 deaths happened, sort of) is empty of fish, but that one's thoroughly refreshed and the water in it has our tapwaterparameters; GH 12, KH 6-7, pH 8. nitrites zero.

the 1200L SA tank where they are now still has zero nitrites, pH 7,8, GH 11, KH 2.

[Carp37]

Sorry to hear this Alex; your SA tank has similar parameters to mine, other than the higher pH (and I'm guessing lower nitrates, which obviously can't be a bad thing). As they have such a vast natural range I'd have expected them to be tolerant of a range of water conditions, although they probably never encounter alkaline water in their natural habitat, and as they're wild caught alkaline intolerance probably can't be ruled out.

Resting near the surface of the water doesn't sound like normal behaviour- whilst mine happily feed at the surface, they always rest on the substrate, unlike hoplos which are happy to rest on surfaces at any depth in the tank.

If it's not pH-related, I can only think of internal stress/damage (gills/kidneys?) due to water quality during shipping, possible extreme sensisitivity to the medications you used, or parasites as possible answers, none of which are very hopeful. I'm puzzled as to how Marc's fish are fine though.

[wrasse]

In over 30years I've kept and bred several corys but I've never kept Callichthys. They're built like tanks but I never knew they were such sensitive fish, so this thread is good reading. Its a puzzle why they are dying.

With some cats such as loricariids, its best not to buy them when they have very hollow stomachs, as its very hard to 'bring them around' to full health. But you can try to stimulate their digestive system with high temps and high oxygenation and live food.

I very much doubt a high temp will help these callichthys, but vigorous aeration might. And possibly the company of large bronze corys might help encourage feeding.

I wouldn't normally advocate a quick drop in PH, it's drastic but in this case it might be worth trying, as part of a last ditch attempt to bring them around.

[Marc van Arc]

I'm puzzled as to how Marc's fish are fine though.

Apparently mine were in better shape (Alex has seen them when I picked them up) and I didn't (have to??) use any medication. Sounds incredibly stupid, but I never quarantaine my new fishes.
Also - although we live just 30 kms apart - his tap water is comparable to that of Lake Tan, while our tap water resembles that of S-Am.

[sidguppy]

on top of it all it looks like the 4 remaining fish have developed a severe case of oodinium.

well, the one upside is that this at least IS something we can battle; so yesterday evening I managed to pickup the latest medication of JBL gainst oodinium and we have started the treatment.

the fish have stopped feeding and they rest above the water on top of the largest bogwood pieces and the filter outlet.

I don't think they'll live through the week, but doing nothing and be powerless of doing anything is beyond frustrating, so with that in mind i went for the chemical box.

needless to say that we're not going to do this again. even if this species becomes more common than imports once every 20 years

[Carp37]

This is depressing- it's obviously REALLY not good for these fish to want to be out of the water! Even if the fish were sick to begin with, it sounds a very strange behaviour- as if the water is irritating them sufficiently for them to prefer being out of it. However, if Richard B looked after Mats' fish for several months without problems, it suggests that hard, high pH water isn't an issue, at least in the short term.

I might have overstated my water hardness in a previous post, as it looks like test strips (1) (mine was Tetra) might refer to parts per million rather than degrees of hardness. As such, if we're not comparing like with like my water is much softer than Alex's.

(1) (I fully acknowledge that test strips aren't as accurate as liquid kits, but they are quick and relatively cheap to use, and back to back tests with liquid kits have shown nitrite/nitrate gives comparable readings, and I wouldn't normally do routine tests for hardness).

I've only ever had possible oodinium infections on the fins of juvenile hoplos (so a similar fish), which was due to an inadvertent cycling nightmare a couple of years ago (so high nitrites and low levels of ammonia were present)- but that might also suggest it's a secondary infection due to stress caused by unfavourable water conditions.

[Marc van Arc]

on top of it all it looks like the 4 remaining fish have developed a severe case of oodinium.
the fish have stopped feeding and they rest above the water on top of the largest bogwood pieces and the filter outlet.
I don't think they'll live through the week, but doing nothing and be powerless of doing anything is beyond frustrating, so with that in mind i went for the chemical box.

Too sad...... looking forward to a fish and then ending up with this scenario.
The thought has crossed my mind to get them to my place, but common sense and experience tell me I shouldn't.

[jimoo]

I too am surprised that these are such sensitive fish. I could have sworn I saw them, or something that looked much like them, established in pools in southern Florida (Fakahatchee Strand Preserve) when I was there last year (along with some plecos). Didn't appear to be high water quality / stable environments.

[MatsP]

I think the ones that are common in Florida are

Hoplosternum littorale

.

--
Mats

[jimoo]

I think the ones that are common in Florida are

Hoplosternum littorale

.

--
Mats

Ah, thank you.

[hoplo]

Hi guys,

So sorry to hear about your Callichthys sidguppy

These are just amazing catfish, we have breed hundreds of these and im surprised to hear the problems you are having.
To be honest with you, if i had gone to the shop and seen them so thin i would not have bought them, but the excitement of finally getting some after so many years, i can understand why you did get them.

Just a quick word on how we keep ours.

Well the pH is always up and down from as low as 3 to as high as 7.5
Our water is very soft. The hardness is about 3-4.
We have them in gravel filtered tanks and also in a central system with temperatures from 70f to 85f and all doing well.

So as you can see they can live in very varied conditions.

Its a shame you dont live in England you could have got some of ours.

[Carp37]

Hi Vicky-
nice to see you back on the site. For the benefit of everyone else, my Callichthys were from Vicky (hoplo).

[sidguppy]

1 down, 3 to go

despite a treatment of 3 days the oodinium doesn't go away.

it looks like we're going to loose all the others and then have to nuke the tank in order to make it viable for other fish.

[sidguppy]

1 down, 2 to go....


but Pat definitely wanted to give the final 2 a last try to save them; cause it's a pair.

so I pulled all the stops:
-changed about 9/10th of all the water.
the 300 watts Jager heater cannot get it over 24'C because it's friggin' freezin' here, and the walls and floor are cooling down the tank too fast. despite us having floorheating.
I HATE cold freezing weather, cause it always messes up our hobby. so I put in warmer water; about 28-29'C.
gradually ofcourse. took us about 3 hours to heat the tank from a meagre 24'C to 29'C

-added 1200 grams of seasalt. I usually don't salt Amazon fish; this is a rough treatment that's more suitable for Central American cichlids, Madagascar fish or Rift lake fish. but now we don't have much choice. salinity is now 1gram/liter wich is an old but usually succesful way of treating ich and similar diseases.

-on top of this I added a firm dose of FMC. FMC = a mix of Formaldehyde, Malachite Green and Colbalt Blue.

these 3 changes should kill about any germs and parasites in that tank. if the Callichthys survive this, they're clean. if not, well I tried everything else

I only have 1 card left and that's Protazol. if this treatment doesn't work I can go for Protazol wich is the most recent equivalent of using tactical nukes on a fishtank.

I'm tempted......

[MatsP]

Good luck. As you say, you are trying everything you can - which is all you CAN do...

--
Mats

[Marc van Arc]

if the Callichthys survive this, they're clean. if not, well I tried everything else

Indeed you have. I sincerely hope the last pair will survive!

[wrasse]

Having worked in the trade on and off, I saw that oodinium was possibly the biggest disease killer of new arrivals. It can be difficult to diagnose and stubborn to treat if not caught early.
Good luck, a danio wouldn't pull through, but a callichthys just might.

[sidguppy]

actually 6 Callichthys did NOT pull through......

the last 2 remaining seem to get a little better! at least they're eating again, wich they haven't done for almost a week.

they're very thin and the oodinium is still there, but their behaviour has taken an upturn

knockin'on wood!