I'm late to the discussion, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that asexual reproduction couldn't be happening in nature. I recall from my ichthyology course a couple years ago that wild Amazon mollies reproduce asexually - the females mate with males from other livebearer species whose sperm pier...

I have heard of it more with glass heaters than plastic ones, but typically this is caused when the heater is on when you do a water change and it get exposed to air. I believe it can also happen if the heater is unplugged but immediately removed from the water. I was taught when I was an aquarist i...

The dark marks on the tail are there, just faint. They are visible in that first photo in particular. It seems they might vary among individuals? Mine has never had as large or bold of marks on his tail as many of the fish in the Cat-E-Log, but it looks like a few fish in the pictures there have the...

Yep, the main method of nutrient uptake varies by species. Generally speaking, plants that invest heavily in a strong and extensive root system like crypts and vals are going to be most efficient at absorbing nutrients through the roots. Stems, mosses, and rhizome plants tend to do well on absorbing...

I was curious, has anyone else set up some extreme or strange tanks to meet the needs of their fish? I keep my group of 6 Pseudomystus heokhuii in a blackwater biotope, but the extreme part is that its set up to emulate the peat swamps they're found in. I have four inches of substrate layered from s...

Definitely try out some root tabs under the vals (very deeply buried) if you don't have any issues with your substrate getting disturbed and you're using sand. They might do better for you that way, and the crypts and sag would as well. (Can't recommend crypts enough, they are my favorite aquatic pl...

What are the other conditions in the tank? What are your lights and substrate like? Vallisneria americana (jungle val/generic val, likely what you have) occurs in hard to low end brackish water, so soft water could be your issue, yes. It does best with root tabs, so you might see better growth if yo...

That's about what I was seeing too. From pictures I've been looking at it also seems serracanthus has dark eyes and nebulosus has silvery eyes, but I'm not sure how variable that might be. Serracanthus may also have a larger dorsal? But that may be due to the amount that its fanned out in the serrac...

Yes, the dark spot in question can be seen in the illustration of A. serracanthus there, though I find it less easy to identify than on actual specimens. The A. nebulosus picture you've posted is from Arkansas. Its certainly a more mottled fish than northern nebulosus, but in Florida where both spec...

Hi all, I was looking through some of the photos of the species of Ictalurids listed here and I am pretty sure that at least most of the photos on the Ameiurus serracanthus page are actually just the southern mottled variety of Ameiurus nebulosus . I recalled that when Dr. Brooks Burr spoke at the 2...

Something brought this old thread to mind and I felt inclined to give an update. Reading back through it, I'm very embarrassed by the amount of oversharing I did 5 years ago, but I do recall the situation at the time that led to those comments so I suppose I can forgive my younger self. A lot has ch...

I'll be attending again, and I'm bringing some friends! I know some people I talked to last time were excited to see more younger people getting invested in the hobby - I've got a group of fish keeping friends that I've slowly been convincing to come. A few of them will be there with me this year. I...

My full grown P. siamensis has always been maintained with tiger barbs without issue. They are not as much mouth for their size as some other cats and if kept well fed should have no reason to bother appropriately sized tankmates. In my opinion, their predatory behavior is often grossly overstated w...

I'm in FL so I have an update! The fry are very fast and hard to photograph, but we were able to get some decent videos. BeQ0-GhcO8g iUAGB-kf6Fw The first video is just one fry, but it was the clearest one. The second shows dad and two fry, which gives a good sense of scale. (You'll also notice ther...

I had to leave a couple of my fish tanks with my mom when I moved about a year ago. She's keeping them for me until I get to a stable enough situation to get the rest of my tanks. Among the fish I had to leave was my trio of Tachysurus trilineatus in their hillstream set up. She just called me to te...

At the 2016 All-Aquarium Catfish Convention I won the auction for the group of fish the Wetspot donated that were labelled Pseudomystus heokhuii . With so many experts around and Wetspot being a pretty reputable source, I trusted the ID. But my cats haven't quite lined up with the listed information...

I talk fish a lot with a group online that gets a lot of new hobbyists. I'm fairly well known for my love of catfish, and with recent discussions about only keeping fish if you can provide a tank within their water parameter range, I've been asked a lot for suggestions of cats that are naturally fou...

In a previous discussion on this forum, it was pointed out to me that Erethistes jerdoni is a whitewater fish, and not blackwater, as I'd thought. There has been some interest recently in this species in a hobbyist group I'm a part of, and those starting to keep them are under the same impression I ...

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4411/36532456691_cd59383336_z.jpg I obtained these fish from the 2016 All-Aquarium Catfish Convention Auction. They were among the fishes donated to the auction by Wetspot. My group is 6 fish, 4 female and 2 male. I flew them home from D.C. to Florida, and now have dr...

I probably had a smaller space to get him out of, but when I recently had to move a brown bullhead I was housing temporarily, I used a large collander! It worked great, especially paired with something else to usher the fish in. (I used a bucket lid.) Though my fish was very people friendly and used...

I'm sure I'm not alone in this - every time someone finds out I keep aquariums, and especially how many, they want to know what kind of fish I keep. And when I tell them, I'm always met with the same question: "Why catfish?" They never seem to be happy with the honest answer, "They're...

Sorry for the delay in responding, I've had company in town. Do you think either tank would be an acceptable short term living arrangement for a pair of Parosphromenus? It would probably be easier to set up a new tank for them after I move in a couple of months. The only reason I'm setting up new on...

So I am looking at getting some Parosphromenus nagyi , and might need to do a little reshuffling to accomodate them. I just set up a rack that holds my two blackwater displays, a 30g that houses my group of 13 Hyalobagrus flavus , and a 60g (+sump) housing my group of 6 Pseudomystus heokhuii . They ...

I always have a bit of a running list of fish I'd like to keep in the back of my mind, and I'm sure I can't be the only one. There are too many fish out there to list them all, but if you had to pick a top 10, which cats would make it? It doesn't necessarily have to be realistic - feel free to inclu...

I haven't been able to stop talking about the convention since I got home. I wish it had been a whole week instead! The speakers were all excellent (I've been really into fish nutrition lately, so I particularly enjoyed Stephan Tanner's presentation), I met so many cool people (Like-minded fish keep...

I work in a public aquarium and while I care for all of the exhibits in my department, the freshwater native tank is "my tank". Recently, we had a group of fish donated that were added to the exhibit, and among them was an Ameiurus serracanthus . (Being a catfish fan, I was pretty excited ...

If I can get off work, I plan to attend my first CatCon this year. I'm really excited.

I was wondering though - how does everyone usually get fish home if they fly?

When I did my research on breeding Pseudomystus siamensis (still haven't gotten to try, unfortunately) I combed through pages and pages of google searches and read every scientific article I could find on the species. There was a lot of good information about them that took a lot of digging to get t...

That's what I figured. Thanks for the help! The seller did respond but said they weren't given a scientific name from the supplier and hadn't gotten to look into it themselves. Their ads claim that they only get to 2", hopefully with the correct ID they fix that so that no one buys one and gets...

I came across an ad on aquabid today for some "Dwarf Asian Bumblebee Catfish". Being a huge fan of Pseudomystus siamensis and their realtives, I was intrigued. Here's the image from the ad: http://www.aquabid.com/uploads/fwcatfish1459623041.jpg (Image belongs to the seller, "The Fish ...