Help with this Synodontis ID please

[KSquared]

Just got this from a LFS and was told it's a Synodontis Multipunctatus, but it really looks more like Grandiops or a few others. I don't know how you all tell them apart but if someone could verify this for me I would appreciate it. Hopefully the picture posts. First post on this site. Thanks in advance.

[Silurus]

Eye size suggests multipunctatus rather than grandiops.

[KSquared]

Good deal thanks very much. Very active and really cool. Will be getting a couple more tomorrow.

[Richard B]

It does look like a multi but a square on side photo would enable an accurate measure of eye size as a proportion of snout length to help confirm this

[KSquared]

I'm sure it's a multi given that's what the LFS said as well. Here's another shot. Hard to get one straight on especially with my Angels being hams for the camera. They seriously wouldn't stay out of the way... Hopefully one of these will do. He's also being quite shy right now.

Added this one because I thought it was a cool shot

[Richard B]

The first of the set of photos in the last post shows the eye to be 74% size of snout length so this should be grandiops

[Silurus]

Measuring the eye size from the photos gives varying results (I got anywhere from 56–68% snout length, which straddles the range for both species). This is probably to be expected, given the differing angles of the fish relative to the camera (this should ideally be done with the fish parallel to the plane of the camera sensor).

Ultimately, the second photo seems to indicate that the fish has 7 pectoral-fin rays, which makes it grandiops.

[KSquared]

Thanks a lot Richard and Silurus. Richard, with that and having just read this... was typing this up when Silurus posted his last comments. So verified. 7 rays... I'll update my profile. Thanks much both of you!!!!!!

http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/spe ... ies_id=710
S. grandiops and S. multipunctatus are most reliably separated by pectoral-fin ray counts with S. grandiops having 1 pectoral fin spine with 7 soft rays and S. mutipunctatus having a count of 1, 8 .

And counting the rays on mine, on several pictures including this one...

and in person. I think you are correct it's grandiops... and either way, it's a beautiful fun fish...

Thanks again.

[KSquared]

And thanks to both of you I learned a lot about what to read, what to look for and how to find the details to identify a fish. Thanks again!!!. Btw I think I have my pleco figured out as well.