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2 of these little guys were "stowaways" on a plant we bought at our LFS. store said they haven't ordered anything like this, so he must've came in with the plant.

he's tough-skinned, and has a spiny ridge running down his sides (made me say 'ouch' when i found him!)
he doesn't have a sucker mouth, and he's about an 1.75 inches right now.
they spend most of the day hiding under the driftwood, coming out briefly for food (cichlid pellets). we put an algae pellet in at night, and it was gone the next morning.

right now they are in their own tank. they got here about 10 days ago.
they may be shy because they were traumitized...we didn't know they were in the plant, so they got rinsed with tap water, left on the counter out of water for 20 mins, and one was declared dead, and put in the toilet, only to be retrieved when he started swimming.



thanks in advance for any ID suggestions!

either this http://planetcatfish.com/catelog/doradi ... /881_f.php or this http://planetcatfish.com/catelog/doradi ... /313_f.php

Mallemalle

they call them spotted talking cat's, cos if you pick him up he will croak, ive had these cat's before and they tend to hide quite a lot, and like you have said they will come out for food .

Kev

These fish are very nocturnal. I've had mine for a couple of years and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have seen him out with the lights on. They need cover to protect their eyes during the day. If you look closley they have a cloudy appearance to the eye, a natural but sure sign of a nocturnal fish.

If you feed them a little after lights out it will ensure they get some food. If you have a low wattage room light, that usually won't bother them too much, so you can still watch them.

I've heard that the eyes become cloudy in a hard water. In a soft water their eyes stay clear. In hard water reportedly their skin also excretes too much of mucus. In my aquarium with medium hardness of water the eyes of agamyxis are cloudy.

I've had a "spotted raphael" and several "striped raphaels" for a few years.
We named the spotted one Confucius. He loves to eat common redworms dug out of the yard, bloodworms, brine shrimp, and catfish pellets.
His eyes aren't cloudy, but when I first got him he wedged himself in a driftwood crevice and badly scraped his top spine.
It got infected with bacteria and fungus which I treated for over a month. Eventually most of his spine did grow back.
All and all, I'd say they're pretty hardy fish. He's quite fat now.
If you ever need to net them I suggest you get a brine shrimp net...their spines won't get entangled in it.

Good luck with your stowaways.

This is definitely the spotted raphael dora. Came across mine in the same way - attached to a piece of bogwood!!

Pic was from a while ago because he's gone back to the LFS now.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/albu ... pic_id=168