PlanetCatfish.com

Hi,

I am a newbie to catfish world. I've been keeping tropical fishes and planted tanks for some time now. My only experience with catfish are with common ottos in my planted tank. Most pleco's i find locally grow too big for my planted tank. Recently I've been thinking of adding some sturisoma catfish to my 75g planted tank.

I searched in Cat-e-Log and am a little confused with the length details. The profile for aureum says that the length of these fishes to be 5.9" and that of festivum to be 7.1". But while googling for details, i found people mentioning the length of aureum to be close to 10". And recently i read something about extra large aureum. To summarize, am a bit confused with their lengths. Can someone give me a defenite answer to this? How long do they get?

Identifying Sturisoma is quite difficult, so be aware that some of the data provided elsewhere MAY be relating to either a mix of different species or incorrectly identified species.

Bear in mind as well that we use "standard length", which means the body of the fish from the tip of the nose to the end of the "meaty" bit of the tail, but not the actual tail-fin. On a sturisoma it may make another 0.5-1"/13-25mm difference.

Edit: Further, have a look at this link, as you can see there are some species that definitely grow quite large.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/se ... distr_id=0

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Mats

I have only kept and bred Sturisoma aureum and about the largest specimens I have personally raised from eggs were males which attained about 7-1/2 inches total length not counting the tail filament which can reach about 2 inches. So that is my experience with my F1 captive bred specimens. My wild caught adult were essentially the same size but I would not be surprised if they frequently grow to 8-1/2 inches in the wild.

They are excellent algae eaters but they have a distinctively carnivorous trend in their choices of foods. Frozen Blood worms, earth worm sticks and live black worms are all I feed mine. They eat algae well but it is incidental to their search for aquatic insect eggs and larvae.

Might I suggest you look at instead?

Cheers,

Jools

I like Sturisomatichthys, but they are far from as commmon as captive bred Sturisoma (or even wild forms of Sturisoma).

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Mats

MatsP wrote:I like Sturisomatichthys, but they are far from as commmon as captive bred Sturisoma (or even wild forms of Sturisoma).

Well, that's maybe true in terms of what LFS sell, but are readily "orderable" and appear on most Colombian lists. Obtaining a small group from a decent/friendly LFS should not be hard.

Jools

It is actually very difficult to find any Sturisomatichthys.
I have never seen one in 50 years of keeping tropical fish.
The closest I have been are the few Rhinoloricaria lanceolata I have seen.
They are neat fish but are not an algae eater.
I wish these were both seen more frequently for sale.

Thank you very much for the fast replies and I appreciate the help. This has cleared a lot of questions that I had.

Jools wrote:Might I suggest you look at

Sturisomatichthys

instead?

Cheers,

Jools

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think I would go with Sutisoma Aureum as it is easy to find, not as costly as others and a lot easier to find 'care' information online.

One more question to you guys.. how many do you suggest for a 75gallon/280litre planted tank? I was thinking of getting 5 of them, but have a doubt whether thats too much.

One more question to you guys.. how many do you suggest for a 75gallon/280litre planted tank? I was thinking of getting 5 of them, but have a doubt whether thats too much.

As was pointed out above, you are seeing differences because many hobbyist have trouble identifying these fishes. S. aureum remains much smaller than the species sold as S. festivum in the hobby.

The key to success with Sturisoma is careful choice of tankmates. Five in a 75 gallon tank is not a problem, it is what they are kept with that causes problems as they are very poor competitors for food. Just make sure you do not put them with anything that will take their food. I would suggest sticking to small tetras as tankmates and ensure there are constant veggies available in the tank.
-Shane

If you offer Sturisoma vegetable and worms or aquatic animal based food and the Sturisoma will eat the worms or aquatic animal based foods first every time from shortly after hatching through out their lives. They will spawn more eggs and spawn more frequently the more live food they get to eat. Fry raised on these foods grow faster and have higher survival rates. Try the experiments and you will find that what I wrote is true.
They are more like Hypancistrus than Farlowella sp they resemble in their preferences of foods.