Help with S. decorus

[urbanjungleman]

To all Synodontis fans, I really need your advise on the "sudden death" of S. Decorus.

I attempted to keep two specimen before but both died with full stomach- do they have the tendency to overeat?
I kept this fish as " cleaners" for my pet rays (1 x motor0, 1 x Tiger, 1 x leopoldi)
with fellow cleaners: S. Angelicus x 1, Platydoras costotus x 1, Liosomadoras oncinus x 1, Erpetoichthys calabaricus x 2, plecos x 4- all in a 2x.6x.6 meter tank.

I am puzzled at their unexplicable death because both appeared to be feeding well on shrimps, tubifex, frozen bloodworms (alongside my rays- or rather, below them) for several weeks and died the very next day!

The two reasons that I narrowed down are:
1. competition for hiding places at night
2. overeating

UJMan

[Silurus]

do they have the tendency to overeat?

Yes, they do. Feed them less as they will gorge themselves given the chance.

[Dinyar]

But neither of your two reasons is a plausible cause of death. There must be other reasons.

Dinyar

[Zack]

Could it have been dropsy?? You said the fish were fat, were they also breathing fast??

[ggdhazel]

Yeah thats pretty much what happend to my Syn. multimaculatus a few weeks ago. He Always seemed to gorge himself and be fine. But then in a period of two days blew up like a balloon. I had a raphael do that one time and I lightly pressed on his stomach, and he actually farted I guess you could say. Some of the gas came out and he eventually expelled the rest and was fine. Thankfully I hadn't damaged him when I pressed on his stomach. Didnt work out as well for the Multimaculatus.

[Dinyar]

I have never seen Synodontis multimaculatus in the aquarium trade. When the name is used by hobbyists, it's usually to refer to Tanganyika Synodontis such as S. petricola or S. multipunctatus.

Can you tell us what your S. multimaculatus looked like and where it was from, ggdhazel? Was it the real thing?

Dinyar

[Silurus]

<i>Synodontis multimaculatus</i> is a only known from the holotype and is a relatively slender species somewhat reminescent of fast-water species like <i>S. brichardi</i>.
The pic of <i>S.</i> cf. <i>multimaculatus</i> in the Aqualog atlas is <i>S. rebeli</i>. It is very unlikely that <i>S. multimaculatus</i> has been imported in the trade.

[ggdhazel]

I picked up the Multimacultus from "Aquatics" out of the Chicago area. They are real notorious with shipping and indetification of a lot of their fish. But they were a great way to pick up out of the ordinary stuff. I looked up the picture of the "rebeli" syno In the the aqualog atlas and it looks nothing like my deceased one. THe picture in the book of the multimaculatus is dead on, but you say it's incorrect? I can assure you it is not a petricola or multi. The picture in the aqualog is the only one I have to go by, there is another one available at a lfs, I might pick it up. My last one held up great for the past year until his recent demise and he is the first syno I have ever lost.

[urbanjungleman]

I found the cause of the sudden death (and it comes really costly!) after stripping my trickle filter yesterday. I found that those feeder platies and shrimps actually jumped at night (probably being pursued by my ex-rays), dropped into the drainage, and landed on the drip plate. Not being visible until taken apart, these feeders died and rot on the drip plate!All along,I did my routine maintainance, thinking that my water was alright. But a nitrate test shows that it actually exceeded 50 ppm (that is the highest that my test kit can tell)!
All in all, a hard lesson learnt- always back to basic. Like what uncle Bill always preached.

Uncle Bill, where are you?

UJMan

[urbanjungleman]

forgot to thank you for all your advise.
uJman