looks like you got a particular virulent bacterial infection; but without any pictures, it's still a wild guess

but i've seen nasty bacterial infections that literally took a fish apart.

it kills and kills fast, sometimes eradicating whole tanks.

you are aware that species like trilineatus and especially leucomelas can handle and appreciate warmer water, but this barbatus should be kept at room temperature in a non heated tank?

they can handle warmth, but to keep em in shape they should have a cool or cold period of several months a year

That is soooo sad!!! Hope they take a lot of plecos off their ban list to atleast try to save them from becoming completely extinct!!! they specifically put them ON that list to make them worthless and hence make their biotope worthless because at first the native people could make a living by catc...

Mats is smack on the money here, folks if you want to leave the fish in peace and even leave the plants in place, the best way to go at this is to simply add clean sand in small bits the sand will slowly "trickle" through the gravel; but fish like Corydoras or other diggers help a lot even...

you got a 10 foot tank and want to add a 10 foot fish. Arapaima gigas.... this is also a Red Listed species, threatened by overfishing; if hobbyists attempt to keep it, it should be kept in a responsible manner. but it simply gets too large for any hobbyist to keep. there are perhaps 2 or 3 private ...

if they're all genetically the same, then all we have is 1 big fat species and about half a million of local varieties


that'll clear up the catelog quite a bit!
;)

I don't think there's any documented case of Auchenipteridae showing parental care

females might rest a while after laying the eggs, but as far as I know they don't really guard or fan the eggs.

depends on what you want to add, but a little extra powerhead is easily placed those Hydor coralia for example work with a magnet exactly like an algae cleaner they're tiny, use little electricity, but even a small one easily adds 300G/H extra current that's a LOT if you have a 55G tank with 1 exter...

I think contrary to Loricariid breeding caves, tubes for Auchenipterids should be open ended on both ends or you'll end up with a sad surprise one day looking at the pics of egglaying Tatia/Centromochlus, I think they go in, lay the eggs and leave on the other end if they "go in reverse" t...

you can keep it for now, but once it'll go past 6" or so, you'll see it gets too big there's 2 things you can do: upgrade the tank (and you'll need a huge tank for it...) or trade it in. unfortunately there's a nasty choice: -good looking L number -good algae eater most of the other fancy color...

you have 11 territorial l numbers in a small tank.....

best separate some of them or that number will go down all by itself

this fish isn't infected, but it has had its' skin rasped off

yup, I agree

a genuine Syno. ocellifer

sadly, even a more common species like this is getting rare

i did and i find it very odd

I was used to encountering them with adipose, not without.

can you take a pic where we can see the fins, especially the dorsal and caudal?

odd that I only spotted it now.... but i got a group of juvenile Schilbe intermedius and I just realised that none of them had any trace of an adipose! now in the past -late 90's- I had a group of 8 Schilbe (we called em Schilbe mystus then), the same species, and I raised them from tiny 1.5" j...

it's not here yet but ordered and glass is paid for the stand, biofilter and quarantaine tank are here; currently I'm trying to get it level (plump level? carpenter level?) anyway, that it's neatly horizontal. it's going to be the biggest tank I have ever owned; 2231 liters or 589 US gallons 3,5 met...

For longer postings I would highly recommend using a word-type program and then copy and paste it into the forum

great tip

and i had to use it in the past as well; not often with PC,
but most often with Dutch fora that have a long history as being more buggy than a scarab-infested Egyptian mummy

whoa that thread is OLD, Jools..... I even spotted myself in my former incarnation which oddly enough has a Phyllonemus typus avatar as well. about comensalism; I've seen it happen a few times too not with Otocinclus; these always died on me, so i stopped killing them by not buying them anymore. but...

the reason why we do not use forest wood is that bogwood has been 'preserved' by acids for millenia. it''s fairly to say that true bogwood is wood on it's way to become a fossil. as a result, it merely falls apart (or gets eaten by pleco's) but it doesn't pollute the tank fresh wood however rots and...

why not use sand as a substrate? it's literally dirtcheap and far better than gravel that almost always works as a hidden source of loads of pollution. you don't need to do a tank overhaul to replace gravel with sand; add sand and ity'll sink through the gravel, filling up the cavities after a while...

can you tell me some details?

like what size they are, are they healthy or very thin, can they be sexed etc

tnx!
;)

thought i might do an update here, since I still got the 5 mini whales and they're doing great! they're getting big.....and boisterous, gluttons and being a pain in the fins for some of the others; but I can't part with em too much fun! and I occasionally get bitten. they try to find out if fingers ...

ah, yes.
i moved house and that involved the loss of my old mailbox

i'll mail you my new one by pm!
;)

I tried to use it; put a number in, changed the first setting to litres and the second to US gallons and nothing happened...... it should work by iself, right? I mean, if I have to put in the last number, it would be kind of redundant..... hitting Enter didn't help, all i got was a white page which ...

the tank is getting quite algy, so this weekend I'll add the Ancistrus since that involves putting a net into a tank with (baby) Triportheus, I might as well add these too; cause they likely to go all over the place. did a huge 4/5 waterchange in ALL my tanks yesterday; which kept me busy for the ev...

Pimelodus sp four line white £8.50(Nice)

perhaps?
it has 4 white stripes......or 4 silvery grey ones, depending on the view
;)

I agree for example the shape of the adipose is different and the sp 3 has larger eyes now eyes don't get larger in comparison with the rest of the head once a fish grows up; quite the reverse if the heteropleura would be a juvenile sp 3, we would have a first case where the eyes grow faster than th...

so am I

Tanganyika still does it for me, esp the catfishes involved
tnx!

can anyone share his or her experiences with Centromochlus heckelii ? I'm tempted to add this species to my Rio Tocantins tank. there's a short vid in the Clog by Jools; fA_VgBGYjuc&feature=player_embedded are they always like this or do they hide regular Driftwoodcat style once settled? and are...

but what species are they?
kinda hard to see......

could be some kind of driftwood cat or Lio's or even yellowish striped ageneiosus.....