Striped Raphael Catfish Questions

[Perfectblue]

I recently was looking at the many fish tanks at a local fish store near me and stumbled across a tank with a bunch of Striped Raphael Catfish and instantly fell in love with them. I love their colors even though their really only black/white, and the way they roam the bottom of the tank. Now after leaving the fish store I was thinking of how interesting it would be to setup a bottom feeder tank with various catfish and a Pleco.

Now I have a few questions about Striped Raphael Catfish first then later I will post about my other questions about setting up the tank itself.

1.) My tap water is very hard and has a pH of the high sevens to lower eights. Would this be suitable for Striped Raphael Catfish?

2.) What size would be the minimum for a single Striped Raphael Catfish?

3.) Are they compatible with other bottom dwellers such as Banjo Catfish, Plecos, etc?

I would appreciate any help you could offer me.

[Marc van Arc]

1.) My tap water is very hard and has a pH of the high sevens to lower eights. Would this be suitable for Striped Raphael Catfish?

Not as such, but you could add peat to get the PH value below 7. The fish you mention below will benefit from that too.

2.) What size would be the minimum for a single Striped Raphael Catfish?

80x40x40 cms

3.) Are they compatible with other bottom dwellers such as Banjo Catfish, pl*cos, etc?

Yes, no problem at all as long as there are enough hiding places.

[zenyfish]

Soft water is better ... but they are tough and adaptable, as bullet proof as they come. They are also one of the more peaceful species I've seen.

[Ken_PCA]

Very peacefule fish. You should try the spotted raphael as well.

[synoguy]

Im rather fond of both striped and spotted rapheals. I have a couple of both, but have found the spotted raphs are a little more shy than the striped ones.

[MatsP]

1.) My tap water is very hard and has a pH of the high sevens to lower eights. Would this be suitable for Striped Raphael Catfish?

Not as such, but you could add peat to get the PH value below 7. The fish you mention below will benefit from that too.

Whilst I agree that a pH of less than 7 would be the ideal conditions, I doubt that adding peat (assuming we're not filling the entire tank) will lower the pH of rather hard water to below 7. There's just plain and simple too much hardness in the water for the acids in the peat to lower the pH of quite hard water sufficently. You can either keep the fish at the elevated pH - which it will probably do fine in, or get an RO-unit [or buy RO/Deionized/distilled water from your local super market if you're in the US]. Check out the water chemistry article in Shane's world if you want to know more.

--
Mats

[Marc van Arc]

Yes, I think you're right. Peat alone will not be sufficient. What I should have added is the addition of soft driftwood (not mopani and such); perferably lots of it. That works!

[ginosanti]

I have kept striped raphaels together with a couple of banjo's.

I had trouble feeding the banjo's, as the raphaels scorged everything down in less than a minute.

I mostly fed pellets, i don'tknow if there are foods that the banjo's eat, which the raphaels will ignore.

I ended up removing the raphaels.

But they definitely are very cool fish.

good luck!

[MIKE]

The rapheal catfish will get about 6in and u could probly put a banjo the about the same size in the tank with him

[apistomaster]

Just a couple of comments:
1. With all those crepuscular catfish you may want to use a small wattage red light to observe them in otherwise total darkness when they are active. I've done this on a tank of 20 Tatia perugiae and they are seen swarming the tank for food.
2. To synoguy, If spotted raphaels are "shyer" than striped then unless you use the red light they must be more fun to watch than polar bears in a blizzard.
3. To ginosanti, I agree with you about the banjos not be able to compete with the raphaels and other cats but banjos are so layed back you can pick them up and move them around to the food as if they were little vacuum cleaners and they take it in stride and just suck up whatever food you put their noses in. It's actually fun to do.
I like all these nocturnal cats. You might as well add some Microglanis bumblebee cats for color . The Oil Cats, Tatia perugiae are also another cat to consider because they feed at the surface and are also very attractive.
With the red lighting it would actually be a busy tank at night.
Larry