Chaetostoma sp.

[chuckkrum65]

I am looking for a small group of either C. nudirostre, pearsei, melesi. Please let me know. Ship to south Florida USA

[bekateen]

Hi chuckkrum65,

That's a very particular list of species you're seeking. Are you looking to import direct from South America, or are you looking for fish already in the USA?

As far as I know, none of these three species are routinely available in the USA through retail LFS or online. However, both

Chaetostoma pearsei

and

Chaetostoma nudirostre

bear a strong resemblance to

Chaetostoma dorsale

, which is often available as bycatch mixed in shipments of

Chaetostoma formosae

.

By melesi, I presume you mean

Chaetostoma milesi

. That's another fish rarely available in the USA, but you can often get

Chaetostoma sp(L445)

and

Chaetostoma joropo

which are both pretty similar to C. milesi.

Please see these posts for examples of getting the other species:
Mystery Chaetostoma, impulse buy at PetSmart
Chaetostoma joropo (tentative ID) from PetSMART.

Good luck with your search.

Cheers, Eric

@Admin, please move this thread to the Wanted (USA & Canada) forum, so that it is properly sorted and can be found in the event that someone does have access to the species the OP of this thread is seeking. Thanks.

[chuckkrum65]

I am actually okay with any species. The tank I am setting up is fast flowing, planted ph 6.7 with temp drops to 67. Attempting to breed S. barbatus. I would like to get from someone in the US.

[bekateen]

Okay, that makes finding fish much easier. The bigger challenge you'll have is keeping them alive. Even with a strong powerhead and keeping temperature below 75F, I've found it challenging to keep mine alive for more than a few months. None of mine have ever adapted well to the aquarium foods (including Repashy painted on rocks), and I wasn't setup to grow algae fast enough for them. But other people succeed, so of course it can be done.

Besides adapting them to food, another issue is that these appear to be sensitive to ich. And if the fish stay at the LFS too long, you run the risk that they pick up ich at the store. From what I've been told, if you get them at a retailer, your best bet is to buy them ASAP after their arrival to minimize their contact with other fish in the store. Some of the fish I bought had parasites in their mouths, so you may need to treat for internal parasites while in quarantine:

Normal rubberlip anatomy or parasite?... It's a parasite

Cheers, Eric

[chuckkrum65]

I have heard they are a challenge. Do you know of any other that could deal with the cold water

[bekateen]

Not a lot of plecos like it as Scleromystax. Your Chaetostoma are probably the best bet in terms of species available in the pet trade.

[chuckkrum65]

Thank you sir. Now i just have to find some....

[bekateen]

Do you have any LFS in your area? The nice thing about the Chaetostoma spp. discussed above is that most are readily available on wholesale lists pretty much all year long, and most cost $8 USD or less (sometimes only $5), so if you have a LFS that you can approach, they may be willing to add the fish to a future order for you.

Cheers, Eric

[N0body Of The Goat]

I've had a mixed bag of experiences with Chaetostoma spp. over the last ~8 years I've been in the hobby.

My first

Chaetostoma formosae

was naively put straight into my 5x2x2 community of riverine fish, it "greeted" me everyday when adding food to the tank, but I'm not sure I ever saw it eat, I was gutted to find it dead ~5 weeks later after a few days of not "greeting" me.

MartinS and MatsP collected my Barilius specimens a couple of years later and Martin brought along what I now believe is a

Chaetostoma joropo

for me. This time, I quarantined for at least a month, ensuring that I saw it react to dried food and eat it before adding it to a community of small riverine fish. Still with me six(?) years on, must be a good 9+cm SL.

Later the same year as obtaining the joropo, I bought a trio of

Chaetostoma sp(L445)

, again putting them in in quarantine. Two of them readily learned to eat various dried foods, but sadly one never did and slowly died of starvation over weeks. The other two are still with me, a good 7+cm SL.

~2013, I came across a lovely small

Chaetostoma dorsale

at the bi-annual auction held in Basingstoke. Again the isolation period to ensure it recognised food before it joined the others. Its growth rate was much slower, maybe reaching ~4.5cm SL before mysteriously being found dead in 2016 IIRC.

In 2015, I obtained two

Chaetostoma formosae

locally from someone shutting down their tank and IIRC, I took a "big gamble" and added them straight to my community, but paid very close attention to them reacting to food (which they did, thankfully). One of them was found dead the best part of a year later (? PlanetCatfish "my cats" doesn't keep records of fish that die, which would help my bad memory), with an odd looking dark green patch in what I presumed was its stomach. The other is still with me, again very slow growing like the dorsale, I'd guess ~4cm SL... At best half the size of my other three that have all been in with my Steatocranus casuarius group for several years!

So from eight specimens, five made it through that crucial early period of teaching them to each dried food and even that QT period was not always successful, I'm far from an expert fish keeper and I hate loosing fish through circumstances where I think I did or did not do something that could have made the difference.

Food wise, mine react to Tetra Prima; Vitalis (New Era) Catfish and Plec Pellets; JBL Novorift; Hikari sinking carnivore pellets etc. Some find "painting" food on to pebbles with egg white and then allowing that mix to dry hard helps, especially in the early days of teaching these plecs what hobby food is, I had mixed results with that (one time the mix had not dried enough and my better half had to do an emergency 2x 75% water change due to the "frothy" water).

I've been extremely fortunate to have kept a number of less common fish in my brief fishkeeping history including these Chaetostoma; a quartet of

Euchilichthys

that are now approaching ~18cm SL after having them for nearly six years when I got them at at ~10cm SL; a

Chrysichthys ornatus

I bought as a ~3cm SL baby in 2012 that rapidly turned into a 20+cm SL fish with a ~6cm mouth gape (who I worry might not be with me much longer); a group of 25

Pareutropius mandevillei

that I ordered as P. buffei; a

Synodontis congicus

that was ordered as a young S. notatus; to then obtain an adult 20+cm SL

Synodontis notatus

a short time later... To name but a few. The biggest miracle of all, in my eyes, is how I've managed to obtain and look after gems like these on a "shoestring budget." Second-hand tanks; not running heaters under normal circumstances; lighting only on two tanks with live plants; bulk buying of food.

Sorry for the long post, it reminded me of how lucky I've been in this hobby and good luck with your search for these low-end tropical catfish!