Tocantins ’24K gold’ Giant Talking Catfish (Megalodoras cf. uranoscopus)

[thebiggerthebetter]

I brought one from pier early this year. Around 4” now around 6” although the colour has faded alittle, starting to look like a normal meh. Pricey little fish. Set me back £120.

Interesting. Thank you for sharing Josh. I remember you posted about it when you got it and I was sceptical, mostly for my ignorance, having never heard of the super yellow irwini before your post, except that one famous photo by an angler in the dark (see below)... Now it is starting to look real. (Only starting though, I wanna see 5-10 of them to believe they are real).

Hopefully it is just a phase with yours and when it is bigger it will get to look like the one above, that Iamfish posted a pic of. I also think the diet must play a big role, must have enough of the yellow pigment.

BTW, is this a very special one in the Iamfish's pic above or do they all from Tocatin's grow up to look similar to this most striking irwini? Has anyone seen pics of other adults?

...

This a wild fish though, so cannot really be used to make a point or prove much about the captive ones:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Here is a picture of a very large Tocantins gold
http://instagr.am/p/CFZ0BeJhLOy/

I must add though that this specimen shows badly damaged pectoral and dorsal fins, which may be an indication that it has just come from the wild... which in turn may mean that no one is able to raise them looking this striking in captivity. It's a far reaching supposition but at this moment I cannot discard it, especially in light of not seeing any other similar-looking and similar-sized irwini assuredly raised in captivity.

 

[amazontank]

Hi bro hope you well!
Anyone know Tim and can get his perspective on his megladoras and if it lost any gold after the transition to aquarium life.
I'm gonna get one anyway and check it out!

I chatted with the importer and he said it's not a new species of Irwini just a nicer color gold variety.
Nice one Viktor you were totally correct ?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Hi bro hope you well!
Anyone know Tim and can get his perspective on his megladoras and if it lost any gold after the transition to aquarium life.
I'm gonna get one anyway and check it out!

I chatted with the importer and he said it's not a new species of Irwini just a nicer color gold variety.
Nice one Viktor you were totally correct ?

I wanna be proven incorrect and will be waiting

Yellow-on-black irwini is striking versus light-brown-on-dark-brown!

But this kind of reminds me of the flash zebra juruense saga - they come out from the wild water looking amazing, with yellow or orange bright base color, and then fade into dirty off white or light brown, drabbish base color... Chicxulub whatcha think, Sensei? I mean about the irwini. We know what you think of jurs

Caught in the wild by George Fear former owner of Shark Aquarium:




George says it faded into this almost immediately (I bought this same fish from George a couple years later; he had imported it to the US and it lived in a tank in his store):




...

It also remind me of the mahseer with amazing colors in the wild and drab colors in captivity. They feed on some wild berries, flowers, flower buds, and who knows what else in the wild, seeds, nuts, exotic insects, larvae, crustaceans, and so on and look like painted dolphin marine fish... and we can't reproduce this in captivity:

 

[amazontank]

What a classic photo! George is such a legend!

 

[krichardson]

What a classic photo! George is such a legend!

Yes indeed.I wonder what he's doing these days?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Post #20 has two great photos of Copp81's specimen: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/giant-raphael-catfish.734393/page-2

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

For lucky Canadiens, Oliver of Below Water might have the coveted yellow irwini. Just got a price list from him:

Megalodoras uranoscopus saw catfish Amazonas 25 15cm $63.75 6@ $56.25

Megalodoras spec. yellow saw catfish Xingu 2 20cm $281.25

 

[tetroid]

The flesh of channel catfish has been observed to turn yellow due to carotenoids in their diet. Here's a link to a scientific article about it. They found the main source to be a carotenoid called alloxanthin, at least in that case. It seems to occur naturally in certain types of algae.

It's not necessarily that, though. Don't know about catfish, but I've seen pale yellowish stripes on characins turn golden when they are kept in really soft, peaty water.

 

[Albertan]

For lucky Canadiens, Oliver of Below Water might have the coveted yellow irwini. Just got a price list from him:

Megalodoras uranoscopus saw catfish Amazonas 25 15cm $63.75 6@ $56.25

Megalodoras spec. yellow saw catfish Xingu 2 20cm $281.25

How do Oliver's yellow variants compare with "normal" irwinii of similar size and other known yellow variants? I've been talking to him about this fish, but it doesn't seem as yellow as others I have seen, and the price is 4X the price of the regular morph. Thanks for any feedback.



P.S. With Jeff Rapps retiring and the difficulty in getting fish into Canada right now from Wes, finding Oliver has been a stroke of good fortune for me.