It's a redtail. If it was a wyckii, the head would be much flatter and the body color a lot darker. Some redtails have pale principal caudal rays (which may cause them to be mistaken for wyckii), especially if the red color on the caudal fin is pale. PS. FWIW, your other striped catfish is <i>Mystus...

Nope, the Chinese language ability to post means that proper Chinese characters (instead of a string of gibberish) will be displayed (you must be able to read Chinese, of course).
AFAIK, there is no other way to write fractions except the method you just used.

The four-lined pims are <i>Pimelodus blochii</i> and there are actually several species of <i>Pimelodus</i> identified as such (what is known as the <i>P. blochii</i> species complex). The body pattern ranges from even stripes to spots to reticulated stripes. I have both the spotted and the striped ...

May make the water a little hard, but it is done gradually, so should be fine.
It'll be something of a trade-off, though, since your plecs and the shrimp came from two very different habitats (<i>Atya</i> are generally found in neutral to slightly hard, fast flowing mountain streams).

Put a small piece of dead coral (you know, the white stuff one can easily get in an LFS) in your tank, and add a new piece whenever it gets too small (it will gradually dissolve with time). Marble chips will also work, I think.

sometimes they shed their shells...

Which is why your water cannot be too soft and you have to provide enough calcium in the water for them to regenerate their new shells.

They are actually filter feeders, so it helps if your water has a certain amount of organic debris.

Nope, definitely not.
<i>Hemibagrus wyckii</i> is probably the most aggressive catfish known to man. When I had one, I didn't even dare put my hand in the tank.

Dinyar, Hopefully, this doesn't digress too much into a discussion of technical terms. The term "sister groups" is just a fancy way of saying "most closely related to". So loricarioids and sisoroids are sister groups means that they are most closely related to each other (compare...

Dinyar, Sisoroids fall in somewhere in the middle of siluriform phylogeny. According to de Pinna (1998), they are the sister group of loricarioids (however, this may change pending the reinterpretation of Diogo in an upcoming book, which is essentially his Ph.D. dissertation). The sister group of al...

Many sisoroids (aspredinids, sisorids, akysids and erethistids in particular) shed their skin because they have so much more keratin (they have a lot of epidermal structures made of keratin) than the average catfish skin (actually, sisoroid skin is more like mammalian skin than fish skin). The way i...

Well, FWIW I kept my <i>Chiloglanis</i> in a very crowded 10-gallon tank, that had among other tank mates, relatively boisterous fish such as <i>Brachyrhamdia</i>, <i>Microglanis</i> and <i>Chaetostoma</i>, and they were doing splendidly well. I had to pamper them a bit to prevent greedy tankamtes f...

Actually, I think Ben is right. I looked up a dictionary (Oxford Paperback) and driftwood is "wood floating on the sea or washed ashore by it".

Interesting. Sounds like the fish might actually make it with improved packaging. I've noticed that this makes a great deal of difference as to whether or not the fish arrive healthy. But then, it is difficult to carry out, plus it might not make economical sense to ship in fewer healthy catfish tha...

Err, they aren't that easy to catch over there. We found that the best way to catch them was to use electrofishing gear and even then, usually had to move a bunch of large rocks. They are always hiding under the large rocks and can never be seen. I don't think you'll be very successful using a dip n...

Scientifically they're known as <i>Atya moluccensis</i> and they occur only in fast-flowing streams, hence their name. Not really easy to maintain in the aquarium. Never could keep mine longer than a year. Not giving them enough calcium in the water, I guess. You can catch tons of 'em if you go to t...

Shane, I hope this is the last off-topic post in this thread, but at least the LFSs in Bogota are selling South American fish. Asian fish are generally considered "inferior" in some way by most aquarists in Singapore, so despite dirt cheap prices for Asian cats, there isn't really much dem...

Definitely not an akysid. First of all, I have yet to see akysids in the aquarium trade except as one-off imports (all of the <i>Akysis</i> and <i>Acrochordonichthys</i> I have ever kept were caught by myself and I have never encountered an akysid in a LFS in my travels on three continents). BTW tha...

The lightened spot you see is probably where the pineal gland is. Commonly referred to as a "third eye", this is a light sensitive organ (part of the midbrain) that is important in helping the animal regulate diurnal (day/night) cycles. I've often noted the lightened spot (pineal gland) sh...

With that said, I'd be interested to know what Asian cats are regularly available in the UK. I've seen the the situation in Singapore (where Asian cats are relatively plentiful and at one stage you could get a black lancer for less than 3 USD) and in the US (where there's hardly anything).

I have several copies of Bailey & Stewart's paper on the bagrid catfishes of Lake Tanganyika. The full citation: Bailey, R. M. and D. J. Stewart, 1984. Bagrid catfishes from Lake Tanganyika, with a key and descriptions of new taxa. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool. Univ. Mich. No. 168: i-iv + 1-41. If you'...

Yeah, sandstone is kind of soft. Some are soft enough to be broken by your bare hands.

Yup, sounds like sandstone. May be a bit too soft. Not sure how well it would stand up to constant grazing by plecs.

This the one you picked up at the beach? May be sandstone.

Polkadot,

Did you mean granite (the gray ones)? Granite is OK.

Dinyar, Here's my take on the situation. With the advent of cheap locally-bred "bread and butter" cafish, the demand for Asian wild-caughts has fallen. Asian cats generally get short schriift from aquarists because most of the species are dull shades of brown or gray (yes, they may be inte...

Keeping the fish chilled might be a way to lower their oxygen demand. This way, you don't have to make use of any more oxygen that is already in the water.

<i>Panaqolus</i> (and maybe some <i>Panaque</i>) seem to utilize wood fairly heavily as part of their natural diet. Studies have shown that they have cellulolytic bacteria in their guts to digest the wood, so I think they get more than just vitamins from the wood.

Sorry, I meant only large loricariids. I'm surprised that your redtail got along well with the rest of the fish (I suppose they are larger than it is). The ones I've kept will kill just about anything I would put in the tank.

The reference you need is Roberto Reis' 1997 revision of <i>Hoplosternum</i>. Email or pm me and I may be able to get you a copy. Here's a brief overview: In <i>Hoplosternum</i>, you have <i>H. littorale and H. punctatum</i>. In <i>Megalechis</i>, <i>M. thoracata</i> and <i>M. personata</i>. In <i>L...