PlanetCatfish.com

I was reading a page on cleaner fish on...well, Wikipedia. Was specifically looking for freshwater species. Thought I might find garra or plecos listed, but instead all it had was this:

Cleaning is notably less common in freshwater habitats than in marine habitats. One of the few examples of cleaning is juvenile striped Raphael catfish cleaning the piscivorous Hoplias cf. malabaricus

I'm very intrigued. The link that wiki cited was broken, though the title seemed to be legitimate.

A juvenile striped Ralph would be about 4-5"? And a full grown malabaricus would be barely 2' long. Do you think its plausible, or even better, has anyone seen their Ralphs cleaning bigger fish?

I have seen cories clean angel fish-- or going through those motions anyway. Specifically C elegans literally going over both sides of angel fish with their barbels. I have not seen this with any others and I have two dozen species or so of cories, including five that are with angel fish.

Hmmmm...I wonder if captive bred fish even have parasites.

What was the angelfish's reaction like? (and if it was of the sexual type, please keep it tasteful)

In Seegers Catfish of Africa book there is a picture of a Synodontis afrofischeri and a Haplochromis Cichlid (obviously holding very still fins closed)showing this behaviour(pg 358).

You are right, we tend to keep our fish mostly parasite free....as much as we can, especially from the type of parasites that the fish would benefit from to use this kind of a behaviour.

Birger

Here's the paper:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S16 ... ci_arttext

it happened repeatedly with my C elegans and some wild silver angels-- it appeared to me that the angels were not at all upset by the grooming. They stayed in place and splayed their fins.

I see the baby bristlenoses do this all the time - to each other and to the juveniles and adults. When they've had enough, the *suckee* just twitches and the *sucker* goes elsewhere

Should have figured if it could be anywhere it'd be in South America.

Thanks for the link, and thanks for the feedback.

Ultimately, as cool as it would be to have a corydoras cleaning station, it would be more practical to just quarantine and medicate.

The thought of imagining Hoplias malabaricus acting as a "cleaner fish" was amusing to me.
If cleaning is defined as eating everything in sight then Hoplias malabaricus ought to do the trick.

Since I put them in a tank together, my Pinocchio whiptails have quickly learnt to shake off my Otos when they try something like this! It seems more like eating than cleaning...

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I'm sure others have experienced their Otocincinclus try to suck on their arm when working in the tank. Otocinclus work over everything in their tank and especially things like your Whiptails which lie around much of the time.

I keep 40 Corydorus swartzi with my Barracuda and I often observe the corys grooming him. I wish I could get a pic when 2-3 are sitting on his back .

prairiefire,
I think what you have observed and photo documented is evidence of some form of true biological mutualism.
It appears as though your Acestrorhynchus tolerates this behavior because it is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Perhaps it is the same with Otocinclus behavior? Although in their case, I tend towards thinking it is incidental behavior rather than a behavior with any particular purpose.

It is a bizzare relationship for sure. The Corys poke around his gills and back mostly and the cuda stays perfectly still. I always keep one or two Cichlids in the tank for the cuda to eat and in almost 4 months now he has never eaten one of the Corys.