Feeding Syno

[lightningfront]

How do I make sure my synodontis multipunctatus are receiving propper nutrition? I rarely see them. They are never out during the day, always hiding in the rocks. I feed my Africans in the morning and they are very agressive at eating all the food I drop in the tank. I also feed when I get home at night, I throw some food in there in the dark to hope the synos are out and will get some, but through dim lighting in another room It still looks as if the afrticans are having at the food in the dark.

[Birger]

These syno's are usually fairly active...so fill us in a little on what other fish are in the tank, you say Africans but the catfish are African as well. I would assume you mean Rift lake cichlids.How many are there, what size and how new are the syno's, what size tank, what are you feeding them that sort of thing.

It is very possible you have these

Synodontis grandiops

instead of these

Synodontis multipunctata

(all formerly considered mutipunctatus)

[lightningfront]

Sorry, I have 7 of the synos in with 16 lake Malawi cichlids in a 125 gallon tank. 2 of the synos are around 3 years old and 3-4" I just purchased 5 more youngins at 1.5-2" when I switched from my old 55 gallon to the new 125. The new tank has only been set-up for 2 weeks now and the 5 new synos have only been in there for a week. I've had the older two for a while now as I said and I rerely ever saw them, I thought adding some buddies would make them come out more to socialize. As far as feeding I haven't been giving the cats anything special, thats kind of what the post is about I want to know if there is something I need to be doing to feed them or something inparticular they need. I feed the cichlids new life spectrum cichlid formula which has a balanced ammount of protein and spurlina. I assumed the cats were eating the left over food the cichlids did not eat, however as I said in the first post with the addition of more cichlids in the tank than I had before it appears that there is not any left over food after their feeding frenzy.

From the profiles the Synodontis grandiops, and Synodontis multipunctata look very similar, how do you tell them apart?

Here are a few pics of the two older ones. I haven't been able to catch the youg ones with the camera yet.

[Richard B]

Grandiops & Multipunctatus are very similar indeed. Externally the differences are minimal & the easiest way to tell is from a side on view, best done from a photo - it is to do with the eye size as a % of snout length. I'll post a link when i find the relevant thread

[Richard B]

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... p?p=105040