Sorry, another ID TSN thread....

[Nyczbubba]

I just want to confirm with you guys cause I know most of you guys are better at identifying then me. Based on the chart in the sticky I have concluded tigrinum. If not can you help ID. Also the yellow on him I dont see on other TSN. Is it possibly a hybrid? Sorry for starting another thread about IDing a TSN i see there are a lot.

 

[ShanerBock888]

Definitely a really nice TSN but it's almost definitely a fasciatum. It's hard to tell until they're like a foot long, but still 99.9% of TSN's in the hobby are pseudoplatystoma fasciatum. A tigrinum, if you could even find an accurately identified specimen, would cost much more than usual. As for the yellow, do you feed it shrimp? If so, they can turn white parts of a fish yellow.

Regardless of ID, it's a really really nice tsn

 

[Nyczbubba]

Definitely a really nice TSN but it's almost definitely a fasciatum. It's hard to tell until they're like a foot long, but still 99.9% of TSN's in the hobby are pseudoplatystoma fasciatum. A tigrinum, if you could even find an accurately identified specimen, would cost much more than usual. As for the yellow, do you feed it shrimp? If so, they can turn white parts of a fish yellow.

Regardless of ID, it's a really really nice tsn

Yeah I was reading that majority are fasciatum. Im waiting on jeff rapps to import some orinocoense. Right now he eats northfin jumbo fish pellets. Thank you

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Nothing's wrong with asking an ID question regardless of the past threads. New fish, new question, new thread.

I agree with Shane that this is a fasciatum. More can be found in this recent thread on the ID issues and how 99.99% of all TSN in our hobby turn out to be fasciatum (or a hybrid). https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/shovelnose.684947/

You may also be right that this could be a hybrid of some TSN species. That's what wednesday13 (our resident TSN expert IMO) believes too. That is, what is farmed is not a purebred fasciatum but rather an intractable mix of multiple TSN species and we get the culls from these farming operations.

As for the green olive color, it is not common but sometimes is seen. I forgot a member's name from UK, he had a TSN for a while that displayed the same greenish-yellowish hue to the dark base color. I don't think it matters much. It may or may not be your light-colored substrate sand. The fish looks a bit strange to me - the skull / mouth shape and the pectoral fins pointing up may be signs of a deformed fish (I've seen before), which is pretty common to see among the farm refuse TSN we get in the trade.

That member's TSN looked like a runt too because it failed to exceed 16" in a long time, years. Again, all this points to fish farm refuse.

Yeah I was reading that majority are fasciatum. Im waiting on jeff rapps to import some orinocoense. Right now he eats northfin jumbo fish pellets. Thank you

One or two people got the $75 orinocoense from Jeff Rapps last year and have been growing them out. It's been a long time since they updated us. If you search the forum for this species name, you will find the discussion on that including the ID, with valuable input from Jeff himself and wednesday13 .

The consensus was we were skeptical of the ID but because of Jeff's stellar reputation, we remained optimistic that those where something other than the usual culls the whole world is oversupplied with at $5-$15 a fish.

One of the motivations was / is that there is a chance orinocoense is the smallest growing TSN, maxing out around 2', give or take.

 

[wednesday13]

I just want to confirm with you guys cause I know most of you guys are better at identifying then me. Based on the chart in the sticky I have concluded tigrinum. If not can you help ID. Also the yellow on him I dont see on other TSN. Is it possibly a hybrid? Sorry for starting another thread about IDing a TSN i see there are a lot.

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Nice lookin specimen pattern and color wise i agree, mouth is a bit goofy lookin tho confirming farm raised/man made imo. ive grown out a plethera of p. fasciatum and accepted donated ones for around 5 yrs. A small portion in the bigger picture, but alot for a hobbyist, through the 75+odd tsn i had during those years only 2 ended up looking different around 20-24". Both being "suspected" p. reticulatum imo, but as my years go on with them there most likely hybrids. Out of all those fish, i kept only 1. hes about 7-8yrs old now and only 24"....The further back you go, into the late 90's and early 2000's you can see more variance in tsn pictured on this site and the internet. There were simply more wild caught fish being imported and aquaculture wasent affecting the population as much either. Anymore, im not sure what were seeing other than hybrids. (hybrids as is mixes of the 5-6 tsn sub sp. themselves) My big point is TSN are very popular for food, they are farmed all over the wetlands and in the actual rivers themselves by the millions. Theres no way they dont escape and foul the natural populations in some way. A "wildcaught" these days could even be a wild type hybrid. Im sure there are still good populations of pure bloods. They are harder to reach, and maybe thats a good thing. Not if ur trying to keep one at home tho lol... "fishermen" could just as easily "catch" you one from the farm. ship it over from a said location and this is where collection points become foggy unless u go there urself and know thats not happening.

 

[Nyczbubba]

Thank you for the great reply and information. Makes total sense because this guy I had for 7-8 months and is just reaching 6inches from the 3.5" i got him at. The orinocoense I recently met someone who got one from Jeff. His is about 12-13" now and you can distinctly tell based on picture comparisons it looks like it was in fact orinocoense. But, then again I am not very good at IDing TSN species.

I do believe that mine is in fact a cull since he is growing at an extremely slow rate. I keep water conditions at top with 2 x 50% water changes per week and he eating tons of varied foods. Again thanks for the reply!

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Wow, that is slow, especially given good diet and appetite. But I've seen this before too, even with some of mine. The slow growth plus the looks points most definitely to a culled TSN.

On the upside, you won't need a 5000 gal tank to house this guy for life.

If Wednesday13 is right and the farmers mostly or exclusively grow a hybrid of several TSN species or maybe even 5-6 species as a food fish, that should be a strong fish that should grow larger than the modest 3' max for the fasciatum.

The fact that we never see a 3' TSN raised in captivity again means we get culled TSN with inferior genes. Almost all the TSN I've had and seen have not exceeded 24"-30". But IIRC, wednesday13 had one that was 32"-34" in his bunch.

Still splitting hairs. There appears to have never been one raised to be definitely over 3', like 3.5'-4.5' or even 5'.

 

[wednesday13]

Wow, that is slow, especially given good diet and appetite. But I've seen this before too, even with some of mine. The slow growth plus the looks points most definitely to a culled TSN.

On the upside, you won't need a 5000 gal tank to house this guy for life.

If Wednesday13 is right and the farmers mostly or exclusively grow a hybrid of several TSN species or maybe even 5-6 species as a food fish, that should be a strong fish that should grow larger than the modest 3' max for the fasciatum.

The fact that we never see a 3' TSN raised in captivity again means we get culled TSN with inferior genes. Almost all the TSN I've had and seen have not exceeded 24"-30". But IIRC, wednesday13 had one that was 32"-34" in his bunch.

Still splitting hairs. There appears to have never been one raised to be definitely over 3', like 3.5'-4.5' or even 5'.

Only 2 of the 5 sp. of tsn exceed 4' in the wild i think... really just p. corruscans is king for size of hitting 4'-5'. So not that surprising a hobbyist cant grow one of the smaller sp. out to 36". my specimen to hit 34" id i.d. as "pintado" fasciatumxcorruscans hybrid. He lives up at Bigrich's now. every bit of 34", they just measured him. Thought he was a p. retic for a while but his pattern shows the same as hybrid pintado pics i see from farms. I still have a p. retic over here... another big one for food being the 2nd largest growing... being only 24" and 7 yrs old id say its a cull/runt also.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thanks to SwellyJelly for digging up this thread on two orinocoense from Jeff: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/pseudoplatystoma-orinocoense-pics-rare-tsn.658257/