Never trust a catfish, and a sad goodbye

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I had a large eupterus given to me a couple years ago and being under the assumption that syn's are peaceful added a large syn decorus to the tank. The decorus and several large bala sharks all came down with ich due to the stress from the eupterus not leaving the decorus alone. Unfortunately, the decorus and balas did not survive. I rehomed the eupterus because it would not leave the rafaels alone. I now have an angelicus but she lives in her own 55g with a few shellies and a BNP.
 
Thank you for this, Hendre. I've added your well laid out case to my collection of similar links. A bit lower than midpage: https://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=43896&p=299327#p299327
Interesting thread, thanks for adding!
Perhaps, like with African knives, chalceus or some cichlids, the secret is having many together.

I had a large eupterus given to me a couple years ago and being under the assumption that syn's are peaceful added a large syn decorus to the tank. The decorus and several large bala sharks all came down with ich due to the stress from the eupterus not leaving the decorus alone. Unfortunately, the decorus and balas did not survive. I rehomed the eupterus because it would not leave the rafaels alone. I now have an angelicus but she lives in her own 55g with a few shellies and a BNP.
Sorry to hear :(
 
The recommendation I had looking into Synodontis at the LFS was, "They are great, as long as you dont like you other fish..." I see this was not far off base.
 
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The recommendation I had looking into Synodontis at the LFS was, "They are great, as long as you dont like you other fish..." I see this was not far off base.
They seem to be most antagonistic towards bottom fish.

The long term gain of this is I can keep more bichirs..
 
I’ve had 2 different synodontis eupterus to date and the first one was as peaceful as you could get while the current one is more willing to be aggressive. He will attack others for a second if they’re getting too close to him however he doesn’t set out to attack anyone.
 
The recommendation I had looking into Synodontis at the LFS was, "They are great, as long as you dont like you other fish..." I see this was not far off base.
This is a skewed base. For every troublesome case there are 10 or 100 problem-free or at least tolerable cases, it would seem statistically.

The trouble is we don't seem to understand why and hence unable to predict.
 
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Sucks you had to rehome the syno, but at least its going to a good home. I got pretty lucky with my syno granulosus being a perfect tankmate with my 4 other cats that he shares a tank with. I have heard many stories of other peoples grans and other synos killing all sorts of tankmates, I even had someone tell me that their syno gran killed his arowana. Pretty crazy the difference in temperament between individual fish.
 
I currently have our jerk syno in with the African cichlids. I put him with my Oscars and he immediately started beating on them. On everything. So, into the aggressive tank he went. He's an absolute menace, though seems to fare well in with the aggressive fish. My prior syno was as docile as they come.
 
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