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some new pics of my tiny gems!


unlike baby Lophiobagrus, baby Phyllonemus match the color of the surroundings! the adults are a deep red color....


the tiny black critter is a newborn baby Lophio I found in the showtank.....


They're completely developed now, except for one thing! the leaves on the tips of the upper whiskers.
notice the big eyes, they look also like tiny Chrysichthys ornatus.....


btw I have found a female breeding eggs again!
I'll try to get some pics of her with the mouth full.

They do look like beauties. Congratulations again. Time for a second CotM! By this point, they can't be jinxed by writing about them!

Dinyar

SMILE!
kinda hard with a mouthful of eggs

this time it's the male holding; they'll exchange a few times a day (!)

update:
the first batch is still doing fine; they grow like a Bonsai; very, very slowly.

The second batch is well under way!
today I trasferred several dozens of fish for breeding purposes; and in the group of adult typus, there was some hard fighting lately.

So I relocated the 4 non-breeding typus (2 pairs!) to the showtank; and the breeding pair (wich are BOTH mouthbreeding now) are in another tank of their own.

During that transfer they spat out many babies, but this time I re-united the babies with their parents....
And all the babies are now back on the mouths!!
It seems P typus recognises its' own offspring; even after being chased and caught, and loose fry is added....
NO swallowing whatsoever has taken place; the parents' mouths are still holding many babies, and the bellies didn't get thicker at all!

I have never seen any fish (not even counting bi-parental mouthbrooding cichlids) wich such true and elaborate care as these cats....

Congrats - beautiful babies, Sid

uh oh

good thing I relocated them; I saw some sighns of fighting and so I found a dead Phyllonemus in the showtank; one of the males I think, but I'm not sure.

good thing I have a whole herd of them coming up; parents are still doing OK, with babies in the mouth and all!

All three other adults are accounted for!

it must be a bit of a territorial freeforall in there; I had to strip and rebuilt the tank....
so between 7 petricola Burundi, 2 Syno sp giants, 4 (now 3) Phyllo's, 2 Lophio's, 3 spiny eels and a whopping giraffenose; there probably was some irritation

Good thing I have a 132G.......

The breeding pair have dropped the ball......

The transfer was too stressful for them, and they have eaten all the kiddies.
after I found out, I rearranged that tank, and one good thing:

They're sharing the burrow again (they still have three to pick from), so in time!

And I had a few losses on the first batch, about 9 or so remain. (they were about 12-13 or so)

And the single survivor of the second batch! he was "lost" during the transfer, and I didn't return him to the parents, but added him to the others; he's still doing fine!

As a result I started feeding live artemia again to the youngsters (I had them weaned off that stuff), to avoid further deaths. They are very picky eaters, very unlike baby Syno's.

My brevispinis pair is breeding AGAIN, so that still runs like a smooth oiled piece of machinery.

too bad, let's all hope they will have a new mouthfull soon. Is there a breeding couple in the other tank? or is this your only breeding couple?

update on the tiny gems:

they're about 1" now and growing, but extremely slowly!

anyone thinking baby petricola's are slow growers should try these; compared to Phyllonemus F1, petricola's are like bamboo

and they're by far THE most fragile catfish babies I've encountered.

I have 7 left of an original 15 or so, and 1 left of the second batch, because the parents decided to eat the other fry

they're very sensitive to waste, waterpollution, other fish, each other; you name it.

a surprise was the presence of 4 new baby Lophiobagrus brevispinis turning up in the breeding tanks as well; so those are also still going on.

new pics of baby Phyllonemus, wich were dropped by the parents during their tanktransfer. after reuniting them with their babies, they picked them up again, but after a few more days ate them, unfortunately.

these are very tiny, less than 1 cm.

you can still see the bellies, they're not eating yet.

typical catfish fry behaviour; they ball up together.

the youngster on the right shows whiskers already at this tender age, but a fairly large amount of yolk as well.

Phyllonemus has large yellow eggs, but few in number.

I'd like to echo the general comments of "well-done" and specifically Dinyar's comments on a CotM article. This really is new ground and I'd very much like to celebrate it with a catfish of the month article.

You up for it Sid?

Jools

working on it, already!


want to have the originals of the above pix for the catelog?

SG

sidguppy wrote:want to have the originals of the above pix for the catelog?

Yes please, as with all picture subs, please send them to webmaster@planetcatfish.com with the species on the subject.

Nice one!

Jools

Congratulations on your acomplishments. I an going to be receiving 5 Phyllonemus and hope to learn from your experiences.

Mark