Did you know fantastic help is an anagram of Planet Catfish? This forum is for those of you with pictures of your catfish who are looking for help identifying them. There are many here to help and a firm ID is the first step towards keeping your catfish in the best conditions.
I recently got 4 of these beautiful fish.
The previous owner told we S polli (Wildcaught).
I do believe him, but some additional imput from you guys would be great ;)
Sorry about the quality of the photo's, but I'm not a photographer lol
The 2 species seen in the photo's are the presumed S polli and S lucipinnis
Most fish in the picture are, as mentioned, S lucipinnis ;)
But there's one bigger, with different markings, bigger/wider mouth, orange teeth.
And I've put one in a close up picture, hoping to show it better.
They are physically very different from my 18 S lucipinnis
Tanganyikafreak wrote:Most fish in the picture are, as mentioned, S lucipinnis ;)
But there's one bigger, with different markings, bigger/wider mouth, orange teeth.
And I've put one in a close up picture, hoping to show it better.
They are physically very different from my 18 S lucipinnis
Yeah, I was thinking on that one. I don't think they're Polli, based on the light coloring and bright white on the main spine of the dorsal fin. It also doesn't seem like they're petricola, because of how wide the mouth is. But like you said they have orange teeth. So they may just be a different strain of Polli, very similar to last picture in the Cat-eLog. How big are they? That might give us a better understanding of what they might be. Yours are different than all of the ones pictured in the Cat-eLog. Very interesting cats though.
The only difference in length is that my fish are around 7 - 8 cm and the ones in that topic were 15 cm.
The colours of my fish, meaning the spots and greyish colour seem to be fading away somewhat
I think the previous owner was correct. I breed both species and the larger fish looks very much like the S. polli I breed. Great fish that live forever. I had my wild adults for more than a decade before starting to breed them. Sexing them is typical for any of the Tanganyikan Synos. If you are not sure, I can upload a picture of a male.
How does this compare to your fish? Both of us need work on our photographic skills.
Here is a pic of a female. I was using a macro lens and have no depth of field.
I would call this a Synodontis polli for sure...many also get fooled by the varying colouration these fish can have, either as juvenile or the different shades they can have when mature from very dark to a nice golden color what I think is dependant on dominance...to the point some have thought they had different species.
