Article © Sean Hensley, uploaded February 26, 2023.

In 2022, I was fortunate enough to meet Sean Hensley, this month's CotM author, at the "All Aquarium Catfish Convention" in the USA. Sean was one of the younger fishkeeepers given the opportunity to talk about the hobby and their passion for all things catfish at the event. It's great to see that the "catfish bug" remains steadfastly easy to catch. Sean posts in the forum regularly and often about woodcats. When I asked him if he'd like to write up a species, I suspected it would be a woodcat and I was delighted to learn it would be the featured species. It is one I was inspired to keep by a Lee Finley "Catfish Corner" article in TFH 1991 and it's one I first kept in 1997 in my first fishroom. I agree with Sean, it is one of the best!

Recently Auchenipterids have become more and more popular in the aquarium hobby. There are many keepers of the more common species all around the world. I am also part of this craze having amassed a very large collection of woodcats in a very short amount of time. Every woodcat I keep is special and some are exceedingly rare. In my opinion, none are quite as unique as Tympanopleura cryptica. T. cryptica is seldom seen in the hobby, especially in the USA. I had been on the lookout for a small duckbill cat for a year or so before I found an importer who could get me a few. Along with some other rare Tatia species I was able to purchase a small group of this wonderful species.

After multiple years of keeping nearly 20 species of woodcat I have come to know the common diseases and parasites they are susceptible to. The most common one being Epistylis. I misidentified this nasty disease as ich multiple times and lost nearly a hundred woodcats. By the time I had acquired T. cryptica, I was aware of the difference and how to treat both diseases properly. As usual with transporting woodcats, half way through their quarantine process they contracted Epistylis. I battled this disease for weeks with minor losses.

Usually after the quarantine process I move fish to their permanent tanks; however, this species was very difficult. None of the fish really ate during quarantine, however I assumed this was due to their illness. Still after leaving the quarantine tank I couldn't get them to eat. Usually, bloodworms work for all wild caught and captive bred woodcats, however this species has very small mouths, and they weren't interested in them. The only thing they would eat was live blackworms. I have no interest in culturing live food at the moment so I had to mail order blackworms bi-weekly. After three or so months of this costly process I decided to start mixing in bloodworms with blackworms. To my surprise they slowly started eating them and I eventually was able to target feed them thawed bloodworms.

This species, and Tetranematichthys, observed enjoying overhead cover.

One might think that once you get a healthy group of fish that are eating you can sit back and relax, however this was not the case with this species. Being duckbills, these fish had no interest in caves and only seemed to wedge themselves behind heaters. Due to the fact these fish were not eating everything I fed them they had a bare bottom tank for maximum cleanliness. Most of the time I would find them just lazily lying on the bottom. For someone who is not familiar with woodcats the fish may have looked deceased; however, they certainly weren't. After a roughly four month long battle I decided to just give up on trying and add them to a forty gallon tank with some other fish. Keeping them solitary was just too much work with all of the maintenance involved.

To my surprise once they entered the large tank they started swimming more, however, it wasn't because of the upgrade in size. It was because of a unique piece of furniture. What was this miracle furniture you ask? A floating turtle dock! Prior to the T. cryptica entering this tank it was home to an aquatic turtle. The dock was an old basking platform that I never took out. To my shock this was the best thing I could have possibly done. Once they took up residence under the turtle dock they decided to begin eating more and more. Now they are trained enough to grab worms from a frozen cube. They also enjoy a high amount of flow and are constantly swimming against it under their overhang. I suspect that they do this in the wild. They swim against the current and wait for small crustaceans, nuts, etc., to flow by them and then they snap at it. They don't seem to be bothered by non-competing tankmates and are just fine with larger fish, as well as ghost shrimp. Personally, I keep mine with a group of Tetranematichthys wallacei and Hypancistrus sp. L450, however they don't really seem to care and any non-aggressive fish should work.

For anyone interested in this species I recommend an overhang as well as a large amount of flow. My fish now swim 100% of the time and are eating large amounts of blood worms. I wouldn't want to go through the struggle of acclimating them to captivity again; however, these are my most entertaining woodcats! If you are willing to put in the work to condition these fish to aquarium life and accommodate their quirks, I strongly suggest that you think about getting fish from this genus. They truly are unique and are fun to watch.

Copyright information for the images used in this article can be found on the species' full Cat-eLog page.

Cat-eLog Data Sheet
Scientific Name	Tympanopleura cryptica  Walsh, Ribeiro & Rapp Py-Daniel, 2015
Common Name	Dusky Dwarf Duck Catfish
Type Locality	Loreto, río Solimões drainage, río Orosa, mouth of Tonche Cano, 69.4 mi east of Iquitos, about 3°47'26"S, 73°14'50"W, Peru.
Etymology	Transliterated from the Greek tympanon, meaning drum, and pleura, meaning side or rib (pleuron), nouns in apposition, in reference to the pseudotympanum. The specific epithet cryptica is derived from the transliterated Greek kryptos, meaning hidden or concealed, in reference to the close morphological and pigmentation similarities of this species to congeners and its previously unrecognized taxonomic distinctiveness.
Articles
Species Information
Size	90mm or 3.5" SL. Find near, nearer or same sized spp.
Identification	Both Tympanopleura and Ageneiosus do not have obvious, permanent barbles. The two genera can be externally distinguished in that Tympanopleura has a prominent pseudotympanum consisting of an area on the side of the body devoid of epaxial musculature where the gas bladder contacts the internal coelomic wall; are shorter, blunter headed without greatly elongated jaws; and have a smaller adult body size.
General Remarks	See also Walsh, S.J. et al. 2015. Neotrop. Ichthyol., 13(1), pp. 1-46.
Habitat Information
Distribution	South America: Middle and upper Amazon River basin. Amazon, Upper Amazon (click on these areas to find other species found there) Log in to view data on a map.
IUCN Red List Category	Not Evaluated
Husbandry Information
Breeding Reports	There is no breeding report.
Further Information
Reference	Neotropical Ichthyology v. 13 (no. 1), pp 24, Figs. 1c, 6d, 13.
Registered Keepers	There are 9 registered keepers, view all "my cats" data.
Wishlists	Love this species? Click the heart to add it to your wish list. There are 2 wishes to keep this species, see who wants what.
Spotters	Spotted this species somewhere? Click the binoculars! There are 10 records of this fish being seen, view them all.
Forum BBCode
	Search for T. cryptica
	Look up T. cryptica on AquaticRepublic.com
	Look up T. cryptica on Fishbase
	Look up T. cryptica on Encyclopedia of Life
	Look up T. cryptica on Global Biodiversity Information Facility
	LFS label creator ARN ref:1.22.259.4845
Last Update	2023 Feb 26 08:08 (species record created: 2023 Feb 26 01:24)

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