PlanetCatfish.com

I'm feeling righteously smart, after rereading over the panda cory's Cat-E-Log page, and researching over said catfish on the board. I recently bought six panda cories, and one died a few days after purchase. Okay, thinks I, perhaps weak stock. But then another one dies. I increase the water changes, add more food, less food, live food, frozen, the works. All the other fish are fat and happy and very sassy from live food, but the pandas....all died within a month.

Come to see my tank water is nearly at 82*F. I cooked the pandas.

So talk about one of the worst purchases I have ever made. Spent a few pretty pennies on these guys, and I didn't even THINK to check the temperature. *sigh*

Make me feel better, guys. What's the worst cat you've picked up in a while?

When I bought some "cute" looking "wood cats" they were only an inch and a half. Not knowing better I did no research on them and litterly threw them into a tank of beautiful wild caught red badis badis. There was lots of cover, rocks, plants, caves in a 20 gallon. A few months later I noticed not as many fish were comming out and the wood cats were hidden most of the time so I had no idea how big they were. Well I ended up tearing down the tank, 3 red badis badis (had 15)......you know what happened.....found my 4 wood cats...6" very plump and happy.....and now....in their own individual "species" tank as most of my fish. They almost found they'er way to that "great big sea"
What I learned from my experiance, always keep an extra tank running for "impulse" buys other than your typical hospital and quarintene tanks. And yes maybe it's an excuse to have "just one more tank" But it's saved me a lot of headaches as I can have it ready and waiting for the next time I come home with something unusual that I was told I had to have....

I really do not think 82 is too warm for corys. Sorry about your loss anyway.

I too made a similar mistake that taught me the value of quarantine. I bought 10 (wild caught and back in the days when even at the wholesale price I paid £125 for the group) that died over a period of a week AND took out a good half of my Corydoras collection in the large show tank I had them in.

The financial loss was bad, that was more than a weeks wages at the time. Furthermore, some of the other corys I had had since really I was a child and that was NOT GOOD.

I now have a quarantine tank.

Jools

Wood wrote:I really do not think 82 is too warm for corys.

Sorry, but that's nonsense. Some species of Cory are perfectly OK at that temperature but many are not especially in the long term. Sure, they'll maybe live for a while at even higher temperatures, but it's not their normal state of existence. Only a very few will breed at such temperatures.

Jools

my worse loss/mistake was recently I bought a group of 6 L129 plecs plus 2 L270 choc zebras plecs (very similar fish but L128 are smaller) and transported them a long way home (bought so many as not likely to find locally -but NOT cheap).
Put them in a "new" tank - well I took the bio filter sponges from an existing tank so it would kick start immediately. (too many fish for my small quarentine tank)and as I had a new empty tank it worked like a Q tank anyway-so did not add to my other big tanks.
fish fine day 1, by 3rd day all L129 dead and next day one of the choc also.
no probs with nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, temp...
then did ph test -usually we have no probs with that here - and it was over 9!!
it seems local water supply had added chemicals to disinfect for the winter...
so also cost me cost of RO unit to solve prob - at least I found out before lost big tanks from bad water changes.

sorry but this was a group of other fish as well as a catfish

I bought a zamora woodcat with two angels and put them in my tank with some guppies.........

The catfish and the angels worked as a team to succesfully deplete my guppy population from 7 down to 1!!!! the angels ambushed them at night (seeing as guppies just float at the top when the lights go out) and the and the three inch zamora just swallowed the bodies.

I agree with Jools, temperatures in the low 80's pose no problems for Corys in the short term. In fact there are some species such as sterbai that do fine in discus tanks. My fish room is hot in the summer with temperatures ranging from 80-84. At this temperature range although I seldom have any breeding activity the fish do fine.

Mark

A couple of stories...
When I first got into Asian cats many yers ago I had my local fish store special order some Mystus vittatus. There were 4-5 fish and one looked a little different. Over the next month the one "strange" one grew from about one inch to three inches! I got scared (started thinking that at that rate he would eat everything else) and returned the individual. On the downside, I have no idea what the Indian Mystus was or any record as this was before digital cameras.

Worst mix up was collecting at the Rio Santo Domingo. I collected several interesting small auchenipterids and had dreams of a community of various little woodcats. Returning home I placed them in HEAVILY planted 10 gallon on the bottom shelf. The point being I could not see in the tank. I completely forgot that there were two trichomycterids mixed in with them. A week later when I was ready to move them I found them all dead or dying and covered with nasty wounds from repeated trichomycterid attacks.
-Shane

A couple of stories...
When I first got into Asian cats many yers ago I had my local fish store special order some Mystus vittatus. There were 4-5 fish and one looked a little different. Over the next month the one "strange" one grew from about one inch to three inches! I got scared (started thinking that at that rate he would eat everything else) and returned the individual. On the downside, I have no idea what the Indian Mystus was or any record as this was before digital cameras.

That was probably M. bleekeri. They occur syntopically, at least where we were collecting in NE India.

HH,
Thanks, that has been my thought. Still wish I had digital camera back then.
-Shane

I dunno wich was more id; but these mistakes rank up pretty high in my screw-up list:

-buying two Hoplosternum littorale's; not for me, but for my cousin. I had only one tank back then.....and they had a very bad case of some bacterial infection wich I somehow overlooked! Result was ALL my Callichthys callichthys dead (and NEVER been able to replace those again!), most of my Opsodoras, including "by-catch" O stubeli, my L pectorale, M persnata etc etc.
I saved the Hoplo's due to medication, but lost a lot....irreplacable fish! (the Hoplo's turned out to be H punctatum; the WC parents of the babies in the catelog!)

-buying a few Belonoglanis spp. Put them in the tank; they sank to the bottom, did't move an inch and died within 24 hours....

-Adding an Ochmacanthus to my showtank, mistaking his nice brown colors for being non-parasitic (back then I made the -false!- assumption that all those gill-suckers were glasslike transparant or fleshy colored...).
He had the time of his life; harassing two subadult Pterodoras and a ton of other hosts!
until I kicked him out, of course.