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.
After buying it about 2 months ago at the size of 2.5-3" TL it disappeared into my big tank and I only saw it again a few days ago. It's now 5" SL, and looks gorgeous, but is it a hybrid, or if not, what is it?
Hi Alan & welcome to PC.
This is one I've never seen before, so it is very tempting to state it's a hybrid. But I don't know all synos of course and even in the Cat-eLog there are some that don't have pictures but drawings instead, let alone all species that are not listed so far.
Did you check all pictures of Synodontis? When you click the link you'll get all syno entries in the Cat-eLog.
Suggestions so far (on the PFK forum) include:
-S. Koensis
-S. Greshoffi
-S. waterloti
-"it does not seem to match any described species." from Silurus, and
-S. ornatipinnis from a book!
, but if Silurus says "it does not seem to match any described species", you can take his word for it. Which leaves you 2 options: either undescribed (yet) or man made. With regard to all the above I'm leaning towards the latter.
Interests: African catfishes and oddballs, Madagascar cichlids; stoner doom and heavy rock; old school choppers and riding them, fantasy novels, travelling and diving in the tropics and all things nature.
it looks like someone managed to crossbreed Synodontis decorus with Synodontis schoutedeni IMO.
the true ornatipinnis is very very hard to get and extremely rare in the hobby for reasons unknown to me.
however the 2 other species I mentioned are not and i think someone in one of those Frankenstein labs in Czech got a bout of inspiration and a needle full of hormones when he saw those 2 species.
those humpbacks are typical for many hybrids out there.
I'm no fan of hybrids, but I must admit that the angelicus x schoutendeni hybrid has a very beautiful body pattern.
The other hybrid in the article (petricola x nigrita) may find it's way into LFS-ses as (juvenile) "Synodontis njassae", so everybody looking for that species pls beware....
The author of the 'breeding otocinclus' article has apparently achieved more than he think: the adult oto pictured is a true Otocinclus affinis, and if that's the otos which bred then I'm guessing the author got the first ever captive breeding of that species.