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Talked to our importer today. He told me that they had had one of my (long sought after) dream catfish during the summer: Pimelodus ornatus. OFCOURSE, they were not available for a long time and OFCOURSE it was during my vacation... so i missed the opportunity

anyway, we were talking about the fact that I was thinking of keeping a group (about 6) of these fish in my tank. He then told me that he also thought that it was possible to keep them together - until he tried just that. He said that he had a group of 5-10 together, they fought like hell and had to separate them. He said that it was NO GOOD IDEA to keep them together.

If it matters they were about 15cm.

I seem to remember that I've read (perhaps here on this forum???) that you SHOULD keep P.ornatus like you keep P.pictus - in groups.

What's your experiences with P.ornatus?

I seem to recall P. pictus as the only species you'd keep in a group. Larger species like Pimelodus blochii are indifferent to each other at best.

I knew I had read it somewhere... COTM may 2002:

With age the fish attains an impressive size yet, more significantly, does not become unmanageable. This affords the aquarist the opportunity to keep a group of animals in surroundings that would cramp or even kill larger members of this family. Why keep a stunted tiger shovelnose when you can have a shoal of these guys with some room to spare?

but it also says...

In addition, we know little of the social behavior of the medium sized pims and will only learn more when someone starts keeping them in groups.

Don't know who the author of the COTM article is, but perhaps he also just kept one individual.

i suggest you forget p. ornatus, because you shouldnt keep them in groups, ans plus, you can have lots of pictus instead
you cant live without pictus
PS: please, do not keep less than 3 pictus, because they will fight and hide, basically making them a bore , and a chore

I've kept 6 pictus for quite a while, but ditched them, because even with 6, they were a bore......

not agressive, no; but they could give any Auchenipterid a run for the money when it came to hiding all day!

all the other tankmates were smaller, save for 2 Platystacus and 3 Sturisoma; so it's not a case of them being bullied; the other grounddwellers were Amphilius, Corydoras and Akysis.

not exactly agressive, nasty fish.

no pictus was sick or damaged, except the one that disappeared and turned up dried under the couch when I did my housecleaning

thought they would lively up the tank, but they turned out to be a -pretty but invisible- major disappointment

now I got 4 Dianema urostriata and they do exactly what the pictus refused; make a lively, shoaling add-on to the tank.

btw the mix Dianema urostriata, Doras punctatus and Corydoras robinae (!) is a very nice one; all those banded tails......

how efficient is your lighting, because pictus like darker tanks. Not pitch black, just dim

It's dim allright; lots of floating plants (a dense carpet of Limnobium, Hydrocotyle and Lemna all mixed up), loads of bogwood wich makes the water look like tea, and all other catfish show normal behaviour, including shy species like Mochokiella, Amphilius and Akysis.

I expected the pictus to be as active as, say, my Doradids (5 Doras punctatus) or Asprenidids (a pair of Platystacus cotylephorus), but I was wrong.

maybe it was just this batch of pictus, mind; but apart from not being visible or active, they fed and grew fine. they just weren't visible.
I would have bought Tatia or Parauchenipterus if I wanted a truly invisible fish; same behaviour, but a lot more unusual and hence more interesting.

I've kept plenty of 'invisible fish' in the past; the kind of fish you see twice:
first when you have them in the bag, the second time when you trade them because they never show and thus add nothing to the tank: Amblydoras hancocki, Auchenipterichthys thoracatus, Synodontis flavitaeniatus, Tatia aulopygia etc.

I Never expected the highly active and boisterous (at least in the store ) Pimelodus pictus to be like this.....

Sidguppy,

I agree with Pictus man...In my tank I have the following:

1 Synodontis Eupterus
1 Albino bristlenose
1 Bristlenose
3 Bearded Cories
3 Angel botias (loaches)
3 Picti
12 Santa Maria Goodeids
4 guppies

There appears to be an understanding in the tank...Syno is in charge, but the pictus act like pictus. You can't just have one...I'm trying to talk the wife into more picti

How hard are the pictus to breed?

Sidguppy,

I forgot to mention that I also like the porthole cats, but my favorite is the dianema longibarbis. These guys have character. For some reson I am not attracted to the flag tail of the other dianema species. You get these guys in groups of 4 or more and it's entertainment.

Thanks,

Scott

beersnob, in answer to your question how hard is it to breed pictus?
well, the answer is impossible at this time. thats because no one knows how its done in the wild either!! which is a shaame because i would breed them all year round!!! i love the guys. Sidguppy, your case is strange because even though you had 6, they didnt come out. This is impossible for you because you have fish that are timid, but, i thnk he best way to keep them active is not to give them a place to hide!!! seriously. ive seen pictures of them going wacko with each other, having fun like danios do, in a tank that had no hiding places. i think when i get a new tank in december, im going to get a filter that extends to the bottom so they cant hide under it!!!
my tank has two pictus, but i know they wont come out, because they have to ' protect their territories' ive tried placing paper on top of the cover glass to diffuse the light, but they arent stupid !! they know ive done it so they just mock me by hiding more [/quote]

As far as I'm aware, there is no commercial breeding of Pictus cats, all are wild-caught.

I've never heard of anyone breeding them in tanks either. So they obviously aren't "easy" to breed. That doesn't mean that it's not possible, probably just a question of creating the right environment. What that might be is a different question: It may be a group spawner that only spawns if there are 50 or more fish in a group, or it may be water conditions has to be exactly right, feeding the right things, etc, etc.

--
Mats

50 pictus sounds good to me

Going back to the topic Pimelodus ornatus can indeed be kept in a group and will school in much the same way as Pimelodus pictus do. Like the pictus they need to be in a group of 3 or more for it to work and they will have the occasional fight where a pair will zoom off around the tank chasing each other and grunting but there is rarely any damage done. I have been keeping a group of 3 ornates together for a couple of years now which are much happier and more active than the single one i kept before.

catfishcrazy - How big is their tank? What size were the fish when you got them/what size now? And did you buy all three at once? (or is it, as i suppose from reading your post, you first got one, then the other two) Any fights when you introduced the new fish?

I will ask the guy at the importers about how serious the fights were and if he let them go together for more than a few minutes.

Their tank was originally a 48x20x24" (about 80g)and they are now in my somewhat over stocked (a uncompleted fishhouse has lead to me not being able to install the tanks i wanted so until i have enough money for the electrics the fish are having to all bunk in together) 72x30x24" (around 200g). I bought all 3 together when they were around 2-3" long each, the original one i had before was a lone fish i bought that had been returned by someone who's tank it had outgrown, when it died i was determined to have another one and searched hundreds of shops until i found a store that had the 3 in stock. They are now between 6 and 8 inches.

catfishcrazy - Thanks for the quick answer. Well, one thing one maybe could see as a explanation for that your fish aren't fighting and that the fish at our importers did, is that you got your fish together as juveniles and they grew up together, while the ones at our importers were put together at an adult size... makes sense? no?

Or is this thing with keeping juveniles together so they won't fight as adults just a myth in the hobby? I've heard it said about some catfish species Sorubim lima, for example, but also cichlids like Tropheus.

I also have 3 Sorubim lima which loosely school together but this time all 3 fish were bought on seperate occasions, the oldest of the 3 which is around 14" was bought 2 years before i added the other two which were bought within a few months of each other from different shops.

I think the main thing is tanksize, when kept in reasonably large tanks compared to the small tanks used by fish stores and wholesalers you get quite different behaviour. Also the ammount of food available plays a fairly large part in aggression issues, having recently been on holiday i left my fish for 9 days without feeding and returned to a lot of fish having signs of fighting, nothing too serious but the odd torn fin and scratch on the body.

Hey all, I have three pim's in my 6x2x2 and they seem to be getting along fine it's just that at feeding time they can get a bit nasty. I think that two have paired off as they both have a different body shape. I have been told that the female has the larger size body/belly and she (if indeed it is a she) is the biggest in the tank. I have spoken to the LFS owner (who has kept and sold many of these) and he stated that as long as the one that is singled out is eating, there would be no problem. The biggest is 9 inch and the smallest (the singled out one) is about 7 1/2 inches. I am feeding them carnivirous sinking pellet that the LFS owner feeds his Pim's. He let me in on his secret stash!!! I think they are a bit fatty though as they leave a slight residue on the brim of the water. The pim's go nut's for it though!!