Featherfin Catfish fighting?

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bpoore05

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 11, 2012
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I just got 2 feather fin catfish today. I have 125 gallon with about 45 other African Cichlids. These two fish seem to be fighting? Do they get along. They are the same fish, are they maybe mating? Can anyone suggest what I do. Thank You.
 
I didn't even know. I got 2 today thinking they would get along. I wanted them to clean the bottom and glass etc. Any suggestions?
 
They're not great glass cleaners. Plecos do that much more effectively. Mine wipes streaks into the algae but never really removes it. They will eat just about anything on the bottom, though!

As an aside, we're talking about synodontis here, yes? Just making sure I'm not talking completely wrong nonsense.

If so, they're amazingly aggressive. Mine spends its whole day chasing my frontosa around, although I don't think she really has the means to hurt it and never has.
 
Years ago i had 2 large featherfins (about 8" each) that used to fight ALL the time. The slightly larger one always chased the smaller out of his territory,but the smaller one always came back. To me it was very strange that they would do this because i was also told they wouldn't fight. Anyway, i tried every method i could think of to stop the fighting but to no avail. The only time they didn't fight was when i was doing a water change, they would actually snuggle up together. One day i spent like 2 hours just watching the big one go at it and i noticed they it would chase the smaller one but never, ever bite it. There were never any marks on either fish, and they both ate a ton of food day in and day out. Neither of the fish showed any signs of stress and they lived together for 6 years like that until i had to break the tank down. To me one of the fish was just a little bully, claiming his territory but never doing any bodily harm. If i were you i would just let it ride and give both of them plenty of space to hide out. Observe them for a while and see what happens. Maybe one of them just needs to be the boss...
 
Hey Slickad85 Thanks for the information. I'll do that. They are only about 1.5-2.5 inches right now. I'll keep looking at them to see what happens.
 
They may or may not fight; they may fight viciously with skin scrapes and even spine punctures or just mildly with just chasing around - it depends on many things in the tank but in general 2 is a bad number (the bigger one will always bully the smaller one and the sex plays a role too while in a group of aggressive/territorial fish the aggression is diluted) and in general riverine synos, such as your Synodontis euptera (if you ID'ed them correctly), are territorial while lake synos, such as miltipunctata, are shoaling species.

Here is an ID help to verify your ID:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/species.php?species_id=121

Here is some relevant reading:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34576&hilit=+euptera
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34602&hilit=+euptera
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34450&hilit=+euptera
 
Thanks for the help. They seem to be fine now. There are 50 other fish in the tank so I believe they will be okay.
 
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