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Mitchell The Monster

Peacock Bass
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Nov 5, 2016
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Have you asked Wes?

What does a search over the usual sites plus general google search bring?
I ordered just from Predatory fins. This is just regular “wild type”. I believe is indeed soldatovi not meridionalis. I will explain my thinking tomorrow. I’ve got a killer headache at the moment so I’ll put together my information in the morning.
hold up I follow u on instagram already lol. Thats kinda funny. Im the kid who lives In NYC who cant get a bigger tank
Wassup buddy! I get more scientific and logical on here. Insta is just for pictures and videos lol
 
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KATALEKEEPER

Dovii
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Nov 18, 2020
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Mini update on the sheatfish. I had a colony of show guppies living in this tank for months with all my catfish. In one night the Chinese wels destroyed the population down to a 1 female guppy.
whats the difference between a chinese wells and a regular wels?
 

Mitchell The Monster

Peacock Bass
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Nov 5, 2016
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whats the difference between a chinese wells and a regular wels?
There are multiple species of silurus, silurus glanis is the biggest of them and illegal in the US. But we are allowed to have “Chinese wels” silurus soldatovi and silurus meridionalis which stay smaller.
 

Mitchell The Monster

Peacock Bass
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Nov 5, 2016
572
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Georgia
Coming up on a month of owning the soldatovi. During a large water change I took some measurements of a couple fish. Soldatovi is 7” whereas when I purchased it was just under 5”. This is interesting to me becuase other reports of people have trouble getting them to grow for the first few months. I must be doing something right. Also I have Notoglanidium macrostoma and Rhinodoras dorbignyi being added to the collect this week. I’m building a monster plywood tank as well. Documenting the process and will post in a thread when finished. Plans are 16’x4’x3’. Housing Chinese wels, granulosus, silver arowana, irwini cat, possible niger ripsaw cat.
 
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thebiggerthebetter

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IIRC you got the fish from PredatoryFins who list them as chinese wels aka meridionalis, $35, normal colored.

Only Wes lists his as soldatovi and his are golden variety. I've not seen one of these yet. Has anyone bought one of this on MFK?

While your fish appears different from what we came to know as meridionalis to a quick glance, especially in the lower jaw, I am not sold on its ID as soldatovi and tend to think more work and digging and evidence is needed before we could call your specimen comfortably a soldatovi. Just my 2 cents.

... But we are allowed to have “Chinese wels” silurus soldatovi and silurus meridionalis which stay smaller.
IDK if this is typo or what but it looks like you are erroneously calling chinese wels the soldatovi while it is the meridionalis.
 

Mitchell The Monster

Peacock Bass
MFK Member
Nov 5, 2016
572
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Georgia
You are right about the needing more defensive evidence on proper ID. To me calling my supposed soldatovi a Chinese wels,I get lazy and rather than typing soldatovi I just slapped on the label Chinese wels.

thebiggerthebetter thebiggerthebetter for the time being. What should I refer to my specimen as? Just call him “silurus” lol

fugupuff fugupuff do you have any images or input on how you seperate soldatovi and meridionalis in your mind. As far as how Rod with predatory fins labels his fish he hasent a clue in hell what his fish is past the price tag.
 
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thebiggerthebetter

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Yes, I'd call it a Silurus sp. and would make it my first priority to figure out the species ID, read the revision, FishBase, etc. and find out how to tell soldatovi from meridionalis and from all other genus members.

As you can see, it is not an easy task, and like all vendors Rod goes by what his suppliers call their fish, if it is something poorly known or uncommon. You and I still don't know it and we don't deal with hundreds of fish weekly, so I don't see how I'd expect Rod to know. But at least he knows what he bought it as from his suppliers.

Is this the fish you bought? $35 on sale, was $45 https://www.predatoryfins.com/product-page/chinese-wels

Rod is calling it a Chinese wels aka meridionalis and he attached this photo... which upon search on Google I found out is a photo of wels aka glanis... so this is not helpful, I agree, even misleading.... but with such a specialty fish, I believe buyer must research, knowing full well that vendor has no time for it...

128704691-wels-catfish-sheatfish-silurus-glanis-.jpg
 
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