Need help with Catfish identification

[Fishyboi4]

Hey guys, so I looking for a catfish that could grow within 12-18inch to be a bottom feeder for my Peacock Bass and i ended up buying this tiny catfish from my LFS. They told and sold it to me as a Sturgeon Catfish which at the time i thought could be true, with its long whisker and body. I choose this over the 4 Line Pictus catfish because of it's rarity but I didn't really believe it because first of all it didn't look similar to the Zurro Catfish they had there, its nose isn't long and shaped the same. Also it's mouth isn't placed underneath the nose like a sturgeon or lima catfish. Instead this catfish mouth is at the tip like a normal non-sturgeon type fish. After researching I thought it could of been a pictus hybrid with a sturgeon catfish until I ran across pictures of an Indian shovelnose catfish aka the Seperata Catfish. What do you guys think? If it is the Seperate Catfish, that may be pretty cool but I may be in for a HUGE treat as they can grow up to a few feet. YIKES! I don't think my 210 gallon would be enough for it grown size. Its currently sitting in my 40g feeder/ grow out tank. Please, I defintely do need help indentifying this fella. Thank you guys.

 

[Fishman Dave]

Ok, first for the easy bit.

Your fine you don't have a Sperata ( no spot, wrong shape, mouth too underslung)
You also don't have a surgeon catfish, Platystomatichthys Sturio ( wrong shape, nose too short, mouth not underslung enough)
Now for what you do have
A few candidates:-
it could be a very young Exallodontus - but the adipose fin does not look quite long enough ( but you say it's only 3 inches currently?)
it could be a pim, but which.
Could be Albicans but dorsal fin too short
Could be Pohli
Not convinced as that does look an interesting mouth. Any chance you can get another stationary side on shot.

 

[Fishyboi4]

If it makes it easier I uploaded a video on YouTube to show it better. Yes its about 2.5-3 inches.

 

[kno4te]

Think it’s exallodontus. Seen these jumpers for sale a bit more now.

 

[Fishyboi4]

Awesome! Thank you very much. How much have you seen them for?

Also how common or rare are these catfish? Thank you very much for your help again.

 

[kno4te]

Seen them for sale as jumper cats. Seen them for sale at exotic fish and wetspot regularly.

 

[Fishman Dave]

Yep exallodontus.
For me in the uk, rarer than, and two or three times the price of sperata.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

IDK what this is. I'd go with Dave and Ron above. It looks like a Pimelodidae or Heptapteridae. Could be one of those pesky (as in hard to ID) jumper catfish.

I think you got what you wanted. A rarer version of the 4-line pim. It's just that it may stay smaller and slimmer than the 4-line and your pbass may attempt to enrich its diet with this catfish, sooner or later.

 

[Fishyboi4]

Hey guys I just wanted to update you guys with this catfish that we were trying to identify. As it got bigger and the features came out more, I finally figured out what species it is. It's actually a Vulture Catfish. When I first posted back it March it was about 3.5 inches and now that 2.5 months has passed, it grew to about 8-8.5 inches already. I'm 90% certain its a Vulture because I actually bought a second Vulture Catfish about 1 month ago and they look almost identical. The new Vulture is actually smaller than the first catfish(unidentified catfish) and you guys will see in the picture and video. This was an interesting grow out.

This is the catfish that we weren't able to identify at the time, which is now grown a lot.


Left: previously unidentified catfish
Right: new Vulture Catfish I bought. Bif you guys can see their spots are almost identical.


The new Vulture Catfish I bought.


The catfish we weren't able to identify is the one I was pointing to in the video. Also, please excuse the dirtiness of my tank. I had just finish doing a partial water change.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Nice! Thank you much for this. I can't believe we couldn't ID it. No doubt now it's a vulture.

The smallest vultures I have seen were around 5" and their proportions were already different a bit from yours at 3.5", closer to those of adults. So if memory serves, yours is the smallest vulture I have ever seen. I didn't know either that they might not have the spotting at all at small size.

At around 5"-6" and larger, they are unmistakable I think.