Post pictures of your beloved catfish aquaria here. Also good for pictures of your (cat)fish rooms or equipment discussions. If you are posting pictures of identified catfish, please do so in the appropriate husbandry and reproduction forum above.
One very important factor in this equation is what you'd like... This is a personal taste thing, and I can't tell you what you'd like...
What we can advise you on is what size fish would go well in your tank - if you tell us what size your tank is. And of course, which ones go well with your existing fish.
or something very close to - there's been several cases of long discussion about the correct identity of Sturisoma species - but they are generally pretty much similar in care and behaviour, so from that perspective you can look at the above species and determine what it needs.
I wouldn't recommend this fish in your tank, simply because the fisn grows to 20cm, and your tank is not big enough for such a large fish.
, and again it's not suitable for your tank - not so much because it grows too big (around 15cm, which technically is OK for your size tank), but because it's a fish that does best in a group of around 5-6 fish (or more). They also eat small fish, so for instance a male guppy would probably disappear at some point...
Sorry Racoll, I am sort of a newbie in home aquariums, it is only with help of friends, family and basic instructions on Ph and Ammonia test kits that this fish tank works well.
They would be theoretically OK. Banjos do like sand though.
However you already seem to be stocked to capacity. What are you nitrate values before your weekly water change?
Well, one thing that I can say is you gotta watch size..
You got smaller fish that can't have bullies in the tank, and you can't have anything too big.><
{You could probably research mollies or guppies and learn what lives in their naturable habitat and stuff, then check it's temperment and see if it is sold in a store... if that helps at all..}
But yeah, good luck at finding something.!
And I believe the Rapheal is too big for your tank... {I shall let others answer though, mesa no expert}
Two... they get mean.
I mean those things hiss if you take em outta water for too long... {kinda creepy how the pet store person knew this for a fact...}
Edit: Like I said before, I don't know 100%, I say wait for Racoll or somebody else to answer.><
I don't want to give you wrong information...
Last edited by Mickey on 20 Apr 2006, 13:17, edited 1 time in total.
I'm with racoll, you probably haven't got much "space" left in your tank [and I should have said so in the first instance, really!]. It may not seem like you have a lot of fish in there, but the smaller the tank, the more likely you are to get problems caused by dirty water, and the more fish you have, the dirtier the water will get...
I would definitely not recommend raphaels with small fish either - same as with the Pictus cat above.
those things hiss if you take em outta water for too long
It's more of a croaking really. They sound like a frog. It's supposed to make you put them back in the water, but they didn't account for kids who kept pulling them out of the tank to amuse themselves!
the website I found regarding the catfish said that the Spotted Raphael was only 4" big?
pictus_man_77, they are actually quite placid. I was suprised myself. They seem to have a half tank each and keep away from each other. Suprisingly, the most aggresive fish is the Silver Molly.
[/quote]You can buy a chemical test kit in most fish shops. They're about £10 in the UK. I don't know how much that is in AU$[quote]
Racoll, does Nitrate have anything to do with Ammonia or Ph levels?
Nitrate in itself doesn't (noticably) change the pH, but it's related to ammonia in the sense that ammonia NH3 is converted to nitrate (NO3) via an intermediate step of nitrite (NO2) by "good bacteria" in your tank.
You need a test-kit for at least:
Nitrate
Nitrite
Ammonia
Some of this you may only need to test once in a while, but nitrate is something you want to check several times a year (once a month or so) to keep an eye on how your water changes are working out - if your nitrate level is not "low", then you need to do more water changing, either more often or more volume each time (or both).
A pH test can be useful too, particularly if you live in an area that has soft water - because you can have something called a pH crash (where the pH drops from around neutral (pH 7) to really acidic (pH 4 or so) due to the breakdown of plants/food/waste in the tank). If the water is quite hard, it's probably got enough buffering capacity to keep stable, and then you don't really need a pH test kit - it'll just stick around pH 8 or so anyways...
Ammonia and nitrite tests will be useful for a new tank to see that the "cycling" (buildup of the above mentioned good bacteria) is finished - in a healthy aquarium there should be no indication of Ammonia and Nitrite at any time.
