First home aquarium successful breeding-featherfin catfish

[Justin David]

As some of you may know, i have recently aquired some featherfin catfish and some cichlids. After research, i have gathered that they have never been successfully bread in the home aquarium. My friends uncle dumped all the fish at her place, and i just asked him, and there were only 2 catfish. There are now 4 and one looks alot fatter and bigger than the other (suspeceted female) the two babies look identical to the baby featherfin catfish that i saw on google images. The female appears to be fat again. Let me know what you think.

 

[convict360]

Intriguing! What are the water parameters, tank size, everything basically lol

 

[fishnatics]

It's good to know someone managed to breed them. Please share all the infos.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I think they have not been bred "naturally" in captivity for a good reason. What you describe may be it but it sounds very unusual (2 surviving out of the fry clutch) and your conclusions hinge on someone else's words.

You'd have to overcome reasonable doubt

 

[Justin David]

I dont have much info on how it was done but i do know that it wasnt what us as fishkeepers would call adequate conditions. The fish were in this tank about 40 gallons http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/overstocked.649810/

 

[slayer5590]

The smaller cats in the pics in your other tread appear to be one of the smaller rift lake synos not featherfins like the bigger ones.

 

[fishnatics]

Looking at the pic of those synos and the 2 small ones are not synodontis eupertus. A different kind of synodontis.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

In the pics in the link, I see one Synodontis eupterus and two smaller ones in the middle look like Synodontis grandiops or statistically far more likely mutipunctatus.

At any rate, they are not eupterus and are not considered eupterus look-alikes at any size or age. You must have confused the google photos you were studying.

So our world makes sense again

Good luck with your new fish though. Those are quite good looking.

 

[Justin David]

Thanks. Deleting this thread

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

In case it helps: fingerling eupterus have stripes, squiggly stripes, bloches, or stripes combined with spots, while the adults have the well known look. Browse through these photos, if you will, and you will immediately see the difference http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=121

And this is what Synodontis grandiops looks like: http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=710 It appears from reading around that ~90-99 times out of 100, people that have this fish think they have the multipunctatus http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?task=&species_id=95 , both called the cuckoo synodontis.

Pretty hard to tell apart, btw:
General Remarks S. multipunctatus and S. grandiops are most reliably separated by pectoral-fin ray counts with S. mutipunctatus having 1 pectoral fin spine with 8 soft rays and S. grandiops having a count of 1, 7 . The soft pectoral-fin elements (i.e. the rays) are almost always branched (the only exception being the last one or two rays, which are sometimes unbranched) a ray is counted as one at its base before it branches out. Also keep in mind the larger adult size of S. multipunctatus. It appears a southern and northern (at least) tribe exist, with the northern being the ''regular'' form and the southern being generally paler with more spacing between the spots.