Synodontis decorus or a hybrid?

[nötter]

I bought these fishes about a week ago. In appearance they look to me like real Synodontis decorus. But these are likely to be farmed from Czech, if the vendor could correctly tracing the origin of the fish. Do you think that the fishes can be a real decorus?

[Marc van Arc]

Hello & welcome to PC.
I'm afraid this is indeed a hybrid. Genuine

Synodontis decora

have bars in the dorsal and tail, while your specimens have dots in the dorsal and too few bars in the tail.
Nice fish, but not "the real thing".

[sidguppy]

when they are very small, the bars in both tail and dorsal haven't formed yet, but I tend to agree with Marc

this is sadly one of those species that has been disappeared from the hobby in favor of cheap fakes that are sold under the true name.

there is one thing that hybrid decora's almost never have and true decora's do have: the branched upper whiskers.

the decora is one of the very few synodontis that have visible branches on the upper (large0 whiskers; in fully grown adults the whisakers look a little like those of Hassar or Doras.

there are a few forms or varieties of this species however:

first: the striped form where not only the fins are striped, but the body as well.
this one isn't in the hobby, yet, as far as I know.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=7504

second: the regular form when the body is spotted and both dorsal and caudal fins are striped
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... age_id=205

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... e_id=11012
this form tends to be quite slim and elongated

third, the most common form in the trade has a spotted body, a striped caudal and a blotched/half-striped or spotted dorsal.
this one gets quite bulky, but in all other aspects it's a real decora
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... e_id=10790
the branches on the upper whiskers are visible here:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=1868


ps why the striped form isn't considered another species, but a few different wriggles on the head of a black and white Hypancistrus adds to 20 new species of Hypancistrus completely baffles me.

[racoll]

ps why the striped form isn't considered another species, but a few different wriggles on the head of a black and white Hypancistrus adds to 20 new species of Hypancistrus completely baffles me.

No conspiracy I'm sure, just a lack of modern taxonomic attention.

[Bijn]

I think it's a real one. A small one but a real one.

Maybe my screen is better then yours but I can clearly see the branched upper whiskers.

[nötter]

Size of these fish is about 6 cm. These indeed have branched upper whiskers.

[jippo]

Nötter asked about these fishes before at Finnish forum and I suggest her to put some photos here too.

They really look real thing, they are still juvies so I would say dorsal pattern is correct.

But they are farm raised and I haven't seen genuine farm raised decora from Eastern Europe before. There have been farm raised decora at 90's from Russia and they were genuine but that's long time ago. Could these be genuine or are these some kind of man made hybrids that they have develope from several species by last 20 years?

Here is one topic with hybrid decora with branched barbels:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =8&t=23495

And topic of "almost perfect multipunctata hybrid"
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =8&t=28546

[Birger]

Real or hybrid, these are close enough as juveniles that I recommend growing it out for a bit and then come back, very hard to differentiate at such a small size but as they get bigger will be easier.

The only thing I can pick out is the humeral looks more pointed than it should be....

Birger

[sidguppy]

if the upper barbels are branched, then I agree, you likely got real ones

not all decora get the striped dorsal, but when they mature the caudal should be striped.

I've seen hundreds and hundreds of hybrids and never saw one where they managed to get the upper barbels to branch.

[nötter]

Thank you all. I'm so glad that I have likely genuine Synodontis decorus. I will return later when they have grown a bit more with new pictures. So that I know for sure that they are genuine.

[nötter]

Updating growth pics. This guy is now about 10cm long. What do you think, does the fish still looks genuine?

[nötter]

One of them looks like this now.

[Marc van Arc]

You take good care of them, given their growth! They look well and healthy.
Wrt genuine or not: I'm most happy to be proven wrong (see first reply), so when everybody else says these are genuine, I take it they are.

[Suckermouth]

That's indeed not a hybrid. Nice fish!

[Viktor Jarikov]

If I may summarize what all this means so far: branched maxillary barbels + dorsal extension + stripey caudal = purebred decora... which implies that the lack of stripes in the dorsal is not all that important.

Here is another case of a decora that mirrors your case exactly in all 4 features in question: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... -hybrid-ID

Even though, many would say the dorsal must be striped, these two cases argue against that.

[N0body Of The Goat]

Last summer I bought six young ~3cm TL fish labelled as S. decora, but even at that size they looked different to the ~8cm TL specimens at another store that even I was shouting "Valentine hybrid" inside my head! My six looked very similar to your photos.

Over the next few months they grew a lot in length and girth, to ~9-12cm TL and larger than my middle finger's girth, with the pattern of a typical decora developing nicely. The last thing to show was the dorsal fin extension, which finally began to grow (to my relief) when they hit ~7cm TL. Even my four Megalechis thoracata had less overall growth that these six decora, by late January I so nearly added them to my 5x2x2 to join my original ~18cm TL specimen (which had prompted the further purchases when discovering they were very social for synos), but I held back for fear of my Synodontis brichardi potentially being a threat as they were a little bit bigger.

But this decision came back to haunt me a month later and still does to this day, when I lost the whole group of decora in a rapid Ich epidemic along with a couple of other African fish (Steatocranus casuarius "dad" and a Synodontis nigriventris).