Anyone Keep/Kept Blue Catfish?
- Thread starter divemaster99
- Start date
I am not directly challenging you since I have no expertise in the area, but what I have seen online contradicts your simple test. See, for example, http://www.catfishedge.com/catfish-species-basics/ but there are others. And in fact it seems "furctatus" (blue catfish species name) actually means "forked".
Not true. In fact, the specific epithet of the blue cat-- furcatus-- specifically references the bifurcated (forked) tail of the fish.
The only large ictalurids (not that there are too many to begin with) not to have the forked tail are white cats and flatheads.
EDIT- I see Simcan is quicker on the draw than me. Well played, sir.
EDIT 2-
Again, not entirely true. Large eild blues will often have a loss of the bifurcation in their tail, but young, healthy captive fish have a tail as nice or nicer than a channel. This will carry over to adult long term captives as well. We just don't see many of those.
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That's promising. To be even surer one could count the rays in the anal fin and provide pics so experts like Chicxulub and Oddball would ID.
I too am of the impression that I have never seen or read anywhere that the depth of the caudal fork differs in channels and blues or is used in ID-ing.
Some pics of my old fish that I 'stole' from Planet Catfish because I don't have my HDD nearby. I don't feel guilty doing this because it is my name on the copyright, after all.
Note the difference in the head profile; the line from the tip of the nose to the dorsal fin is generally straight on the BC but curved on the CC. Note the difference in barbles; the BC has severely reduced barbels in relation to the CC, as is typical for pelagic catfish. You can't see it well in this shot, but the anal fin's bottom edge is perfectly straight on the BC while it is quite visibly rounded on the CC.
These guys shared a tank but they never really got close to one another. I reckon they're about eight inches in these shots, but this was like four or five years ago so I really don't remember.
Note the difference in the head profile; the line from the tip of the nose to the dorsal fin is generally straight on the BC but curved on the CC. Note the difference in barbles; the BC has severely reduced barbels in relation to the CC, as is typical for pelagic catfish. You can't see it well in this shot, but the anal fin's bottom edge is perfectly straight on the BC while it is quite visibly rounded on the CC.
These guys shared a tank but they never really got close to one another. I reckon they're about eight inches in these shots, but this was like four or five years ago so I really don't remember.
Nice, Rob. Thanks. I didn't know/think of the barbels and the straight profile. Good to note.
You cannot steal your own pics
PCF merely hosts them for you and with your permission. They are your photos and thanks to people like you our main point of reference - the PCF's Cat-eLog - gets improved day by day, year by year for all to use it.
You cannot steal your own pics
PCF merely hosts them for you and with your permission. They are your photos and thanks to people like you our main point of reference - the PCF's Cat-eLog - gets improved day by day, year by year for all to use it.