Did you know fantastic help is an anagram of Planet Catfish? This forum is for those of you with pictures of your catfish who are looking for help identifying them. There are many here to help and a firm ID is the first step towards keeping your catfish in the best conditions.
I am afraid I am going to the really annoying "can you identify this for me please" post with the terrible picture......To make it worse I think it is one of the the large Synodontis species (of which there are loads!) but he has long needle like projections from his fins, especially the dorsal, but I don't think they are rigid. He is very dark in colour apart from some yellowish tinges to his fins. He also looks very smooth (reminds me of liver!) I have had him a while now living in my sump and he has been growing nicely- he must be around the 12" mark at least. I have been trying to photograph him for ages but he never comes out for long and I managed to see him tonight and couldn't find my camera! Please forgive the crappy phone pic. Ta.
Hi Capester. Welcome! What do you mean he is living in the sump? Sump as in biological filter? Is it your preference to have him live in the sump?
Richard is a great expert in synos but I am afraid the whole panel of the in-residence-experts won't help you with the ID with a high degree of confidence based on that pic. I've been wrong before too though
Richard is a great expert in synos but I am afraid the whole panel of the in-residence-experts won't help you with the ID with a high degree of confidence based on that pic.
Victor...Going by the dorsal and pectoral spines and color, and sort of on the pattern, I am quite sure Richard got it right
Thanks for the kind words Viktor. I've "read a couple of books" and have a bit of experience in a few species over a fair few years but compared to some of the posters here i'm certainly no expert.
If this is frontosa, it is a species that has cropped up in the UK from time to time often as an overlooked brown syno, particularly as a juvenille
Lou: Every young man's fantasy is to have a three-way. Jacob: Yeah not with another fu**!ng guy! Lou: It's still a three-way!
Well, maybe this was one of those rarest (duh!?) times, when I was wrong. I think you are using a whole separate aquarium as a sump, which explains your verbiage. I've seen this done often in LFSs.
I was trying to help ID this on another forum, glad the OP came here and get some real help
He did point out that it seems to have dorsal fin extensions, which, apart from large decora, I've not seen many with these.
I'm hoping we'll see some more pics.
Martin
Hello guys, how rude am I- I completely forgot that I posted on here! I have some more cats now and stumbled back across your excellent forum! I am back with some more pics hopefully- yes the "sump" was actually a 5 foot tank with media at the end to act as a filter and return pump, he had about 3 foot of space but I know have a wolf fish in there so thought I better move him to the main tank! Since he has been there the yellow "spines" have faded somewhat but the pics are clearer! Have looked up syno frontosa and he doesn't seem as "speckled" as the pics I can find online but it probably is him- thanks- here are some more pics...
Hello, that's maybe a good shout- I am only going by pics on the web so who knows if they are correctly labelled! In a picture I have found Syno schall does look very similar as the main whiskers, barbels (or whatever they are called!) are shorter and thicker as they are in mine but they are longer and thinner in S. frontosa.
This looks pretty close....
Interests: African catfishes and oddballs, Madagascar cichlids; stoner doom and heavy rock; old school choppers and riding them, fantasy novels, travelling and diving in the tropics and all things nature.
take care with this species; it has a lot of character and it's not to be combined with the more docile catfishes.
it's a very suitable cat for tanks with robust cichlids and it's adaptability when it comes to waterparameters will make it a good fish for Central American set ups, Malawi tanks, Tilapia tanks, you name it.
Hi, thanks- I thought it must be pretty hardy judging by the state of the tank at the place I got it from! It is in with big cichlids a fly river turtle, 2 ripsaws, a granulosa and a giraffe catfish so they should keep him in check! Cheers
Not sure what it is, (I know old school dimwit again) but I did keep 3 syno Schall or at least i thought they were because of page 39 in catfish of the world vol 2 by David Sands. ID wrong or right your fish is'nt the fish I had. The biggest of the the 3 did 14" in a 5x2x2 tank, (before it killed it'self by smashing the heater) it got that big very quickly and killed its 2 smaller "mates", again old school, but if it helps.
If Dave sands book was right you have a colour varient or what Richard said.
