Non-parasitic Trichomycteridae

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 13 Jan 2003, 17:18

Anyone else ever kept those?
I've kept four species of Trichomycterids over the years. The first was a 'contamination' of an Otocinclus batch; the Glass Trichomycterid; Tridensimilis brevis.
This tiny fish ate bloodworms and live tubifex, I sort of told myself it wasn't a parasite, hence and released it with the rest, wich proved to be a mistake, as it relished to take off some scales and slime as well from other inhabitants. It lasted only a few weeks however.
The second Trichomycterid I encountered were 4 young Trichomycterus alternatus (although I thought they were Pygidium itiaye). Rarely have I kept such fun fish!
completely harmless and acting like loaches on angeldust when feeding time was happening. They could "swim" through the sand, unfortunately they weren't long lived (a year or so) and I've never seen them again. In the end they were 8 cm big. non-fussy eaters, very peaceful too.
The third species ,-of wich one is still around in my best friends' tank and currently at least 7 years old- were a quite large group of Ituglanis metae, but I've "known" them as Trichomycterus sp.
I got my first one in Germany as "mystus sp" (!!), I knew it wasn't that, fortunately they didn't and it changed ownership for 6 DM (about 3 Euro...). some time later I got a few more and a few years later when the original group was dwindling, I could buy three youngsters again; most of those by an Importer. These fish rarely make the trade...
This is a happy-go-easy fish, if there ever was one. Contrary to the small Trichomycterus, these don't dig, or rarely. They sure like dense plants and prefer to bore themselves in between roots or stems of bushes, even close to the surface. They were extremely good at robbing eggs from Hoplo-bubblenests!
They're quite big, my biggest easily reached 15 cm, but the presence of well-developed ventrals made sure it wasn't Eremophilus (who get even bigger). Another wasted chance by the importers! Mastacembelids seem to "hate" them, at one time I kept a Mastacembelus armatus, who got peaceful with two Calamoichthys calabaricus (Bichir-eel), but who managed to tore most fins off my Ituglanis. Once removed to my friends' tank, these grew back in short time.
The last species was a single Ochmantus; this time I knew it was a parasite -sort of- but I assumed that all my fish were too small for him to crawl in the gills (I didn't realize there are other ways of fish-terrorism as well) , so I loosed him on the rest. It was a bit carnage!
He was incredibly fast, could dive in the coursest grit, and rip scalesand skin off any fish, even the, then around, Tank busters; two Pterodoras granulosus. I had to take him back to the importers....
Anyone else ever kept Trichomycterids, and are they still as hard-to-get as then? Because -especially the nonparasitic species- they are really beautiful, and great to keep in all kinds of tanks!

Mika · Post by **Mika** » 13 Jan 2003, 17:31

Last year i managed to get my hands on Eremophilus mutisii.It is very beatiful and peacefull trichomycteridae.I got four of those.Basic colour is green with lots of ornamenrtal marks.They were round 15-30cm.Sadly they carried some intraspecific disease which didn`t affect to any other fishes.Two died that way and one jumped out of aquarium.I have still today only one survivor which seem to do fine.You can`t keep them with aggressive species because they get harrassed and are slow eaters.I´ll post to Jools few pictures this week about this fish.Probably these fishes never arrives here again but hope that won`t happen.I`d like to keep them in species aquarium with lots of leafs at the bottom.Second time i buy all of them from the store.

Post by **Silurus** » 13 Jan 2003, 17:59

SG,

I kept Pseudostegophilus once. A parasite and a fairly large one at that. Large feeder goldfish and koi could not survive one night in the same tank.
That said, Mario de Pinna had a beautiful Trichomycterus sp. in his apartment when I was visiting back in 1998. I think a fair number of the nonparasitic species are found in cooler waters and would probably need to be maintained best that way.

Heok Hee

STINGRAY · Post by **STINGRAY** » 13 Jan 2003, 20:20

I thought all the cats in this family were lethal, have you seen the damage they can inflict on large cats. I have a mid eighties catfish atlas published by TFH and there are pictures of 5ft cats with holes the size of a fist straight through there heads. Some of these cats are also reputed to be able to swim through urine straight into its host ,usually an unfortunate native. OUCH.Was it difficult to find these cats I have never seen any on wholesale lists?

Post by **Silurus** » 13 Jan 2003, 21:15

No, not all trichomycterids are parasitic. This is one of the most maligned of all catfishes. Only two subfamilies (Vandellinae and Stegophilinae) are parasitic, and attacks on humans (which are very rare) are always due to accidents rather than by design.
They are rare imports, as I would imagine the parasitic ones would be badly starved dring shipment and manyu of the non-parasitic ones require cool, well-oxygenated water (not always possible during shipment).

Heok Hee

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 13 Jan 2003, 21:44

I think it has even more to do with the fact that most exporters think as well; that all trichomicterids are parasites...
The bigger Eremophilus and Ituglanis-species are well suited for fishtanks; temperatures between 22-26'C don't harm them. With the smaller Trichomycterus-species it seems indeed 25'C is a bit "hot". (hence the short lifespan of mine?)
But since, especially from Asia, it's possible to ship fishes like Conta conta, Erestis or Hara (not to mention loads of Gastromyzon and the like); it should well be possible to do the same for the long-time underrated Trichomycterids (the non-parasitic species of course).
About parasitism; IME there is a third parasitic underfamily; the
Tridentinae; Tridensimilis sp cannot be trusted with other fish!
I've seen them attacking characins and slow moving Callichthys to get skinpieces, or at least trying to do so. The "host" fishes weren't amused at all, and were clearly harmed or irritated in the least (wasn't my intention, but it happened, see above post)

btw I misspelled Ochmacanthus.....

Post by **Dinyar** » 13 Jan 2003, 22:46

We posted a picture of a Cetopsid that we'd bought at Petland [like Petco, a very mass market store] of all places in the "What's my Cat Forum" a week or two ago. We broke biotope and put him in our Asian tank, since the S. American tank has lots of smaller fish in it, while the inhabitants of the Asian tank are mostly quite big. Heok Hee was kind enough to ID it for us -- Pseudocetopsis othonops was his best guess.

It just lies on the substrate all day. Never seen it swim except when I chased it once or twice. It's belly seems full, so it must be eating the FD bloodworm and other dead food I feed it. Any idea what this fish or fish like it eat in nature?

Thanks,
Dinyar

Post by **Shane** » 13 Jan 2003, 22:58

Dinyar,
It has been my experience that there are three types of trichomycterids. Leaf litter spp, sand spp, and piedmont spp. I think that leaf litter and sand burrowers just scrounge around for whatever they can find while piedmont spp. scour among the rocks and gravel. I would guess small aquatic insects and insect larvae to be their main source of food.
As to why they are not imported more... I think this has more to with collecting techniques. Few collectors use very fine mesh nets as they are (as HH knows) a pain to work a river with. Apistogramma collectors may find some spp. in the leaf litter, but I will bet that they mostly throw them back. Most local collectors are given very strict lists of what to bring back and stick to the lists for fear they will catch and transport fish and then not be paid for them.
I think that there are a lot more trichomycterid spp. out there and I would not be surprised in the slightest if they ended up one day being the largest family of the siluriformes. In many rivers it is possible to collect 3-5 spp. in one microhabitat.

Post by **Silurus** » 14 Jan 2003, 00:03

Dinyar,

Cetopsids eat "regular" catfish food (invertebrates, etc.) in the wild. I have several mottled brown Pseudocetopsis in my tanks right now, and I never see them come out from their hiding place under the PVC pipes, even at night, but they appear well-fed, and sometimes during feeding time, I can see the pipes moving as they frenzily burrow under them looking for food.
Shane, you are certainly right about lots of hidden diversity in leaf litter and other vegetative substrate. One can get five or six species of Pangio just in one scoopful of leaf litter in an Asian stream (for some reason, loaches predominate over catfishes in Asian streams).

Heok Hee