Help Identifying (Shovelnose)

[djinn]

I bought a catfish on Saturday sold to me as either a:
Tiger Shovelnose Catfish 12.99 or
Dwarf Giraffe Catfish 5.99

The worker in the store wasn't sure which he was, so he gave us the cheaper price. He's about four inches right now, and was the only thing in the tank with a larger (6") Sorubim Lima Shovelnose catfish, which was floating vertically beside the filter, while this one was hidden under a rock.





I looked through all the pictures of these species here, and he doesn't look at all like the Giraffe Catfish.
The Tiger shovelnoses all have vertical stripes.
A young Lima Shovelnose looked the closest, but they all seem to have clear fins, where this one has black pectoral fins, and spots throughout his dorsal and caudal fins.
There was also something called a Spotted Shovelnose Catfish that got my hopes up, but also looked nothing like him.

Is this one of the fish it was sold to me as, and their markings just change with age?
He spends most of his time slowing swimming about the tank at all ranges, usually resting in a plant.
Any help in identifying this catfish would be appreciated.

[MatsP]

I don't know, but

Phractocephalus sp_hybrid

looks similar. Maybe it's a different variaton on the theme.

--
Mats

[Silurus]

This is a juvenile of either

Pseudoplatystoma tigrinum

or

Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum

.

[djinn]

Thank you Silurus, I found a picture under P. Tigrinum that looks just like it.

[racoll]

I think you got the wrong fish there i'm afraid.

The dwarf giraffe cat

Anaspidoglanis macrostoma

is a great little fish, well suited to the home aquarium.

Unfortunately, the tiger shovelnose can't be kept in the home aquarium. It grows too big.

I would swap the fish before the dwarf giraffe cat gets snapped up by someone else.

[LimaShovel]

im 100% positive that its a juvenile Tiger ShovelNose
ill post a pic late.

[albino catfish]

A while back my local fish store receved a ship ment of baby Tiger Shovel Nose (3-5"). they look just like the one in our pictures. Now the one's at the fish store are starting to change color as they'er growing. Yours might change color and start too look more like a Shovel Nose as he grow's.

[Sorubim lima]

correct me if im wronge but isnt it a tiger shovelnose x with a lima shovelnose have seen meny of these fish. hope this helps
chris

[Waldo]

It looks like what we get for the Tiger Shovelnose. Good find but as said before your going to need a lake to house him when he gets bigger.

[MIKE]

yea i agree with waldo

[SPG]

I have been trying to identify my catfish as well. Mine is the same as the drawing on the welcome page (the stripey one - not the brown one) and it looks like yours but with no spots on the fins or bogy at all and vertical stripe on the body but horizontal in the tail. It is silver and black and I would be really disappointed if it lost this colouring as it grew older. It is only about 1.5" long right now & was sold to me by a local fish dealer who was unable to identify it as it arrived in a batch of a different species altogether.