Found a catfish in my Koi pond..

vandal · Post by **vandal** » 22 Aug 2004, 18:42

Hey guys... I have a fairly large natural spring fed koi pond and the other morning my mother was down to visit and to her amazement seen what she thought was a 6" to 8" pleco.. dark in color with grey or silver spots... First off I'll mention it's spring fed so it's really cold... the water rarely passes 62F. I live in New Brunswick, Canada..

anyway.... when me and my girlfreind moved here 3 years ago we cought a few crayfish in a brook to put in our aquarium... while we were there we found 3 little 0.5 to 1" catfish looking guys and decided to put them in the koi pond for fun.. And I'm positive that's what she seen. Unfortunetely I have no pictures and haven't even seen them myself yet but I'd like to know exactly what species they could be.. from what I can find online and remembering what the babies looked like that I cought they closely resemble the "northern hog sucker" (Hypentelium nigricans)...

is there any chance these live in NB? are there any other species I can look up to compare?

Any help appreciated...

thx

Post by **Silurus** » 22 Aug 2004, 18:57

The northern hogsucker doesn't occur north of Ontario, so I think what you have are probably either longnose suckers (Catostomus catostomus) or white suckers (C. commersonii).

vandal · Post by **vandal** » 23 Aug 2004, 00:50

definitely doesn't look like the white sucker... possibly the longnose.. I might try and snap a pic of some adolescents in the next couple days if I can catch any (if I do I'll post)...

thanks for the reply