PlanetCatfish.com

My sister's given me a catfish sold to her as a 'Hong Kong plec'. I've searched for it on this site under common name and can't find it. Its quite small and flat. Can anyone tell me what it might be ? Thanks.

It's not really a pleco--it's a loach. Also called the hillstream or saddleback loach. There's quite a few species sold under the common name.


Loaches.com has a ton of good info on these animals. However, the majority of tanks are not set up to accomodate their needs (IE, very fast, well oxygenated water...think two or more powerheads, cool water, etc).

I had a look at loaches.com and at saddleback and hillstream as you said. Mine looks most like the 5th picture down on this page

http://www.loaches.com/species_pages/ga ... latus.html

Thanks a lot for your help with this.

When you say 'cool water' how cool do you mean - my tank runs around 25(77).

That seems fine, 22 - 24 C would be a bit better I think, but it also depends on the other fish in your tank I suppose.

Pectorale

even better would be a non-heated tank (18-22'C), and aeration, and a pump/filter/powerhead that does as much volume per hour, like 4x as much as the tankvolume or more.

Those things live in brooks and rapids.....

Thanks for the info guys. This is a kind of follow up question - if its really a saddleback or hillstream loach why is my LFS selling is as a Hong Kong pl*cosaurus (or some similiar long word starting with plec?). In the shop there's a detailed label about the fish, with a picture, and it definitely matches the fish I've got. Can anyone enlighten me? Also the LFS charges a little more for this fish (£3) than for a cardinal tetra (60p) for example. Are these more difficult to catch and/or breed than other freshwater tropicals? The most I've paid for a fish up to now was £2.50 for a hatchet. Most of my fish were £1 or less.

They are called Hong Kong plecostomus because:
a. They come from Asia. Not necessarily Hong Kong. There are two main sources of gastromyzontines: Borneo (Gastromyzon, Neogastromyzon, Hypergastromyzon) and southern China/northern Indochina (Beaufortia, Pseudogastromyzon, Sinogastromyzon, Sewellia and a bunch of others I forget). Presumably, many of the southern Chinese species have either been shipped from Hong Kong (or the importers presumed that they came from Hong Kong), hence their name.
b. They bear a superficial resemblance to plecos, hence their name.

As for the price, they are more expensive than neons because they are wild caught fish (as opposed to cardinals, which are commercially bred in large numbers). They are also restricted to hillstream habitats and are a little more difficult to find than most tropicals. Economics at work, I guess.

Any Gastromyzon or similar fish for a mere 3$ is a give away. They're never expensive (except for those 4" stingray looking things, whatever those are), and you get a m,ightily interesting fish for almost nothing.

Unlike the bulk of weird cats on this forum that never show up here; many interesting Homalopterids, Balitorids and Cobiteids show up over here, and usually quite cheap. Just stumbled on some honest-to-god-Homaloptera's a week ago (didn't buy them, though). Another fascinating fish.

Sort of an "available" alternative to the nowhere available Glyptothorax/Amphilius/Chiloglanis/Euchilichthys....

I had a group of olivegreen Homaloptera's years ago; they're not that hard to keep either, just plenty oxygen (big pump) and not too many foodcompetitors. They accepted a wide arrange of small foods, and I lost them only due to another heatwave in 1990 or so.

Silurus wrote:
As for the price, they are more expensive than neons because they are wild caught fish (as opposed to cardinals, which are commercially bred in large numbers).

Off-topic i guess, but aren't cardinals and neons all wild caught? I seem to remember reading somewhere that 90% of the revenue from export of aquarium fish from the amazon comes from neons/cardinals...

I've heard that they're not really comercially bred very much because they're spawns are quite small, and they're not THAT easy to breed.

Not so sure about cardinals, but neon tetras are commercially bred, no? At least I see them listed as such on exporters' stocklists.

While cardinals have been bred in the aquarium, it's apparently difficult to do so, thus almost all specimens in the trade are wild caught. Neon tetras are apparently much easier to breed, but are also wild caught in large numbers.

Dinyar

Dinyar wrote:While cardinals have been bred in the aquarium, it's apparently difficult to do so, thus almost all specimens in the trade are wild caught. Neon tetras are apparently much easier to breed, but are also wild caught in large numbers.

I also thought that most Cardinals were W/C, but I can't remember the last time I saw wild Neons. I thought it was simply uneconomical to bring them in wild given the price they sell for from Singapore etc.

catfish1102 wrote:In the shop there's a detailed label about the fish, with a picture, and it definitely matches the fish I've got.

Sounds like a Maidenhead Aquatics outlet to me?..
Whereabouts in the UK are you from 'catfish1102'?

Kesgrave in Suffolk (near Ipswich)

catfish1102 wrote:Kesgrave in Suffolk (near Ipswich)

Ah. Are there any decent outlets down near you?
Are you a CSG member? (and if not, why not? )