Synodontis ID

[Dave Rinaldo]

I (think) I bought this as

Synodontis koensis

.

pic taken 09/28/06

pic taken 07/25/09
11 cm SL

[Birger]

Hi Dave

What is the length of the fish?

Birger

[Dave Rinaldo]

Meant to include that.

Second pic the fish is 11cm SL.

[Birger]

For koensis there seems to be a couple of discrepancies:

Your fish is more spotted than marbled... most pictures and the drawing in Poll's book show much more marbling, but in the West African book ( Paugy,Leveque&Teugels) it talks of "body entirely covered with brownish spots and marblings against a lighter background" so this probably varies among individuals.

There seems to be differences in the humeral process, some show blunt and the West African book say's blunt in a diagram and pointed in the description.

It has the narrow black basal membrane on the maxillary barbels,the right pattern on the fins...

with the spotting and the shape of the humeral have you looked at

Synodontis waterloti

there seems to be a lot of variance as well as far as spots and mottling with waterloti.
koensis also has a small distribution and I would imagine any collecting going on in Cote di'voire is very limited.

Birger

[Silurus]

I am also aware that there are Synodontis species being named that have a similar color pattern to that illustrated.

[Birger]

Well that should be interesting, I will be looking forward to that.

[Richard B]

I am also aware that there are Synodontis species being named that have a similar color pattern to that illustrated.

Very interesting HH - any idea (approximately) when this will be? Or how many species?

[corybreed]

Dave,
I picked up the same fish about 6 months ago. The shop only had one. I thought it was waterloti.

Mark

[Dave Rinaldo]

I'm pretty sure this fish came from Toyin at Rehoboth Aquatics.

I see he now lists the fish as Synodontis cf. koensis.