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just checked the tank, and I see complete mayhem....

My Burundi's are spawning!
darnit
all the tanks are full.

but obviously I've got a happy bunch!
to be continued.

Are these the "true" S. petricola? I seem to remember you saying that the "true" S. petricola has never been spawned in an aquarium. Are these The Real Thing (TM), or just S. pepsicola?

The reason I ask is that the S. petricolas that I bought last month were labelled English-bred "True" petricola. On the basis of your claim that aquarium spawning was unknown for the "true" variety, I had concluded that I had bought the dwarf petricola. Now I am not so sure.

Can you clarify?

"True" petricola are not only found in Burundi, although that is the type locality. I have seen specimens matching the type specimens in appearance and counts from the southern Congo shore as well as Zambia, which leads me to believe there are "true" populations found all over the lake. The "true" sp. gets much longer than the dwarf, and also has different proportions to its features. To date, there have been no reported spawnings of this larger species, in which case Sid's spawn would be the first.

Rusty

Only if Sid succeeds in hatching the eggs, otherwise it don't count.


Mine are 6 wildcaughts from Burundi, and they look like elongated dwarfs with many small spots. They move more "snakelike" than dwarfs and they're bigger as well. Overall it's a much darker fish, with a very "long" head and more spots.

As a bonus I recently acquired two "contaminants" that were in a sending of multipunctatus from Tanzania.
These are much bigger than the Burundi's (and I have reason to believe they're halfgrown); they look like "giant petricola's", but the white bands on fins, whiskers and tail are much broader; those white bands seem to "glow", like the white on granulosus.
They have a broader mouth and a "snout" like S dhonti, but less. And definitely lots of character. AFAIK it's a pair too (lucky lucky).

Pix to arrive soon, as soon as the tank is up and running (I ran into some serious trouble and lost almost all Triglachromis, as a result the tank looks crap. It didn't bother the cats though) and looking less cloudy than today.

pix as promised, but there are no pix of true spawning embraces; those vritters do that right in the bush.....













quite different from the irregular spotted rounded dwarf, aren't they?

imported from Nyanza Lac.....[/img]

Congrats and good luck, Sid. First Lophios, then Phyllos and now Burundi petricola! That's pretty impressive. Your pix are good too. (Send some to Jools.)

Since you have this magic touch with Lake Tang fish, I suggest that the next species should be S. granulosus. Then you can quit teaching school and just teach sex education to Tanganyika catfish!

Dinyar

Yesterday I almost bought a pair.....

but a friend who was with me stopped me, because it would seriously have harmed the upcoming trip to Australia....

So I'll buy them with the leftover change when I'm back (yeah right)
LOL

Instead I bought three Tanganyikan spiny eels from Burundi.
pretty too! and MUCH cheaper.

unfortunately the Burundi's don't have offspring, neither do the polli's. I recently put the polli's in the breeding/guppypherromone tank, but nothing happened...they need some more "fattening up" (females) with special stuff.

The males definitely had a go, but no eggs.

Those are about as close as you can get to the species Matthes described.

Compare them to a paratype:


Rusty

Rusty wrote:Those are about as close as you can get to the species Matthes described.

"Those" being whose?

Those being Sid's fish.

SidGuppy Worte:

but a friend who was with me stopped me, because it would seriously have harmed the upcoming trip to Australia....

Sid, Australia will still be there later! Besides, if you suceed with S. granulosus, you could go to OZ as often as you'd like!

Wow, you guys/gals have me really scratching my head. The pix that Sid posted of his Burundi Petricola, which I have yet to find any reference to, look identical to the wild caught ones I have been breeding for quite some time. I do not have the ability to post pix in this forum or I would just to show that Syno. Petricola, are just Syno. Petricola. They are no longer considered "dwarf Petricola" or " giant Petricola", or other wise, at least not in any of the readings of late.
Regards, Rick

I am sure someone else can provide more detailed information but there is a whole group of fishes loosely being called the Petricola complex, it has not been in readings of late because it still needs to be sorted out and the people you are doubting are the ones that will be at the forefront of this sorting process, there are new discoveries coming out of these lakes all the time so to me (I have more syno's than cichlids) it is exciting to find this out and provide new challenges for the future. There is a huge focus on cichlids from these lakes and even they are continuously being revised so it should not be a surprise to find this among catfish as well. Now if we can only get some of these others imported into Canada.....

I've lived in Australia for about 5 years. It's really not that special

not for you it isn't......
but if YOU had to live in one of the crummiest, dirtiest, overcrowded, small-brained, measly little s****y countries of the world, you'd long for SPACE to BREATHE too.

I would LOOOOOVE to be in a place where you can walk or hike for a couple of days without seeing a single human! and I'm not so happy about living that close to the North Pole either.
it's cold, it rains, the wind blows always, it drizzles, it rains, it freezes, it downpours, it fogs, it rains, it storms and then it rains some more. And in summer it smogs....filthy yellow stuff that messes up my eyes, clogs my nose, suffocates my lungs, sticks on my skin and generally makes life miserable. Europe is DIRTY.......
I like HEAT. I like it SO hot, the birds fall frizzled from the sky, asphalt melts, beer turns into sweat faster than you can drink it, I like water, LOTS and LOTS of water. With things in it...crocs, coral reefs, sharks, crocs, a few snakes and another croc.
and a shark

I live in the Netherlands for 39 years, believe me, it ISN'T that special!
the only good reason to live here, is if you like to grow old without any risk whatsoever, and if you lioke to smoke more grass than you can hanlde.
I like a little risk now and then, and quit g long ago, so.....

BACK on TOPIC
Spawning is a bit quiet now, but they're all growing now.....I have EVERY reason to assume, this is another fish than the dwarf. I've kept and bred dwarves for years (syno's that is ), and if you look real close you spot the differences. for example, the pattern. dwarfs have small and big spots in an irregular pattern. and the shape, dwarfs are smaller and stockier too. Burundi's "swim different", more "snake-like".
I don't know if it's a whole new species, but it's definitely another variety.
Old dwarfs can be confusing! they look a lot like these, especially males.....

and another thing: when petricola's appeared in the hobby, everybody assumed they were all the same! So they were all lumped together. The same goes for breeding. It wouldn't strike me that weird, if people had them mixed up and breed with them....the offspring is probably 100% fertile.

Sid - how about an update on these little fellas?

They're still doing fine, but the spawning frenzy is over, I guess.
I still see a lot of "lead-swimming" by two or threes, often one of the two males (I have 2 certain males, 3 certain females and 2 I-don't-knows).

Recently I see the same behaviour by the 2 Syno sp "giant petricola".....

Unfortunately I'm running out of breeding tanks, so no way of saving those eggs.
I have two tanks of Phyllonemus breeding attemps (wich are fairly succesful; 1 tank with babies, another with a mouthbreeding pair), 1 with the Lophio brevispinis having another go at it (see my CotM on this fish), 2 wich are holding separate sexes of S polli (wich I will try again in the near future) and a breeding tank with Tropheus sp black Rutunga F1's holding...

So I'll save the Burundi's for later!

sidguppy wrote:They're still doing fine, but the spawning frenzy is over, I guess.
I still see a lot of "lead-swimming" by two or threes, often one of the two males (I have 2 certain males, 3 certain females and 2 I-don't-knows).

Recently I see the same behaviour by the 2 Syno sp "giant petricola".....

Unfortunately I'm running out of breeding tanks, so no way of saving those eggs.
I have two tanks of Phyllonemus breeding attemps (wich are fairly succesful; 1 tank with babies, another with a mouthbreeding pair), 1 with the Lophio brevispinis having another go at it (see my CotM on this fish), 2 wich are holding separate sexes of S polli (wich I will try again in the near future) and a breeding tank with Tropheus sp black Rutunga F1's holding...

So I'll save the Burundi's for later!

I could help you with clearing out that baby typus tank

They're MUCH too fragile to fool around with, yet, but you'll be the second to know (Rene Kruter is first on this, that was a promise...)

sidguppy wrote:They're MUCH too fragile to fool around with, yet, but you'll be the second to know (Rene Kruter is first on this, that was a promise...)

I'm fine with that The only problem is that i got 1 tank with leptosoma, juli's, Xenotilapia's. And I think that's food for adult P. typus, so I have to see what I'm gonna do with that other tank.

You're wrong there.....
P typus will catch anything up to the size of a guppy; when given the chance, but nothing else!
Any fish bigger than 1" (2-3 cm) is perfectly safe!

I re-introduced my 4 non-breeding typus back in the showtanks with the Halembe's; no problem!
It's the other way around....apart from their appetite for small fish; they're very peaceful. A nasty Lamprologus will wreak havok on P typus.

oooow, then bring them on
Then i'm interested. I can always trow some burtoni's in the tank They will have enough live food then
Is J. dickfeldi to aggresive for P.typus? My male is pretty aggresive, aspecialy when they got some youngsters. And that's almost all of the time.

Update on the Burundi-petricola's.....

I got away with it!!!!
I was doing ordinary tankmaintenance and rooting with a hose in the biofilter.
When tossing the brown goo from the bucket in the sink, I noticed a tiny fish stirring up the debris.....

A baby petricola!

since there are no dwarfs in the tank, and the Synodontis sp Giants fighting with the Burundi's , but not getting into the spawning, I'm quite sure I have a geuine (and hence, NOT a dwarf) baby Burundi-petricola on my hands.....

I already took some pics; once I chopped those with the software, I'll add some pix.




]editmode]
Here we go!




As you can see, it already has many spots, and the 'even spotted pattern' can be seen on the head.

this little critter is less than 1" big (about 2,2 cm is my guess), AND......while ripping open the biofilter, my work is rewarded by a second (and even smaller) one!

so the tiny Tim doesn't have to do without company.

Sid,

Congratulations. That's a unique and impressive accomplishment. Look forward to a more detailed spawning report for posterity.

Dinyar

PS: Sorry for the late response. Been traveling...

has anybody any photos of baby syno cf. petricola "dwarf"?
I'm asking becouse I purchased yesterday 5 little cute bastards, which were sold as petricola syno. However they dont look like yours baby Sid and I'm wondering if there is any chance that I still got petricolas :]. Mine are about 1,5cm long :) and are silver(and sometimes they become grey) with black spots (not many of them, however one got a lot of very small black spots on head - the biggest one, looks a bit like njassae), they got also white barbels, I will post pictures soon :D ahh and they got two little spots on their cadual fins (one on upper part and one on down part).

you have to post pics!
all baby Tang-syno's -the ones that are bred in captivity- look a great lot similar...it's in the details that we can see differences, so without a pic, it's impossible.

how about babies? Are they growing well? :)

yup
There's been a huge spawning frenzy right now in the petricola-group.

unfortunately i have no spare-tank right now (too many fish!)......

hopefully there will be more babies in my biofilter!

hehehe yeah :D wish you nice group of them :).

Is there any special requirements for breeding S. Petricola? I recently purchased 4 and would like to understand breeding of synos. I understand for corys (Habrosis) and would appreciate an assist.

Thanks,

Scott