PlanetCatfish.com

i think a really cool but predtory catfish would be:
-the body of the common pleco, same colour but'naked' instead of having armour
-the terminal mouth of a pimelodus pictus but as wide as the pleco (obviously).He would grow to the same size as a common pleco
-long whiskers, as long as the fish
he would patrol the tank by himself and eat anything he could, with the advantage of being omniverous

It would be called ' false pleco pim' (as he would be pimelodidae)

i will try and make a pic of him, but that is my idea
so What do you think guys and galls?

-"Ancistrus Arctica" with many white whiskers over the hole body , so that it look like a Icebear

Neon banjo.

Jools

Megalododoras gigantus; size of a halfgrown Orca, 5 meters or so.
that would be cool, esp snorkeling next to one

This may not be in the true sense of a fantasy catfish, as this hope is more functional than aesthetic, but... I thought of this one this weekend, as I was brushing algae off of the sides of the pool - someone needs to develop a pool pleco. Just a standard plec would be fine, would just need to be able to take the ~5 ppm of chlorine that the pool has.

jen.nelson wrote:This may not be in the true sense of a fantasy catfish, as this hope is more functional than aesthetic, but... I thought of this one this weekend, as I was brushing algae off of the sides of the pool - someone needs to develop a pool pl*co. Just a standard plec would be fine, would just need to be able to take the ~5 ppm of chlorine that the pool has.

What about Plecostoma?

http://www.reemco.com/lawn_and_garden/plecostoma.html

Why not skip the chlorine all together?
that way you can keep a load of fish in the pool, and swim with your own fish!

that's what I would do, if I ever get another life; one involving money so I could buy a house and dig a pool for example.

The body of a sailfin, but the coloration of a zebra. Not shy at all, and only could be spawned in the wild or in my aquarium...might as well make some money

Why not skip the chlorine all together?
that way you can keep a load of fish in the pool, and swim with your own fish!

I can't convice the person who pays the other half of the mortgage that that's a good idea.

The pool is really over-filtered, too, so it would be almost perfect...

Jen

sidguppy wrote:Megalododoras gigantus; size of a halfgrown Orca, 5 meters or so.
that would be cool, esp snorkeling next to one

Until my Brachyplatystoma goliath bit it in half...

How about zebra striped Barbatus. Barbatus face and body shape...with a zebra striped body!

Or just a Zebra Cory!

i think that it would be great with Phractocephalus hemioliopterus that only grows to 20cm (8 inch?)

Kaare

Oh my god! a dwarf RTC would be fantastic!!! the size of a pictus cat would be brilliant!!
wowzer this thread of mine sure is popular

hahahah ive made the picture of mine, but how do i put it up? its a word document though so how do i show the picture? and btw, ive had to use a planet catfish pleco pic. Hope you dont mind !!![/img]

Turn the picture into a JPEG and host it on imageshack or so; then you can show it here

Jools wrote:Neon banjo.

I'm falling off my chair thinking about this one!

It would actually be perfect for a tank with brightly colored smooth gravel and a forest of fake plants in neon colors. Don't forget the agate boulder, or perhaps some of the flashier plastic aquarium ornaments would suit this tank.

Speaking of fanstasy catfishes, is it even possible for an ancistrus to have a different color on the bristles than on the head and body? The possibilities would be very entertaining even in the natural color range.

I know it's a fantasy fish, Jools. So, can we play a little further? What kind of fantasy environment would a Neon Banjo need to conceal itself?

A river severely polluted with heavy metal ions; these come in all colors!

Or it could hide in oilslicks on the puddle-muddy edges of the trans-Amazon road

bronzefry wrote:I know it's a fantasy fish, Jools. So, can we play a little further? What kind of fantasy environment would a Neon Banjo need to conceal itself?

They would always lie in strict formation so as to look like the eyes of a very large fish and so be given a wide berth by all...

Jools

how about a talking Raphael catfish!!
it would look like a striped raphael, but it could speak gnlish with a posh accent
hahahahaha it would be hilarious
in the night you could say goodnight catty, and he would say good night old chum ahahahahaha

Sid wrote:

A river severely polluted with heavy metal ions; these come in all colors!

Or it could hide in oilslicks on the puddle-muddy edges of the trans-Amazon road

The Neon Banjo would come to the river's edge during the night and "click" some sort of odd Loridiform(?) language.

Jools wrote:

They would always lie in strict formation so as to look like the eyes of a very large fish and so be given a wide berth by all...

Now that's a shoal worth contemplating. Do you think a Banjo in this instance could become predator, not prey?

I would like a catfish that looks like a tiny version of Cthulhu. http://www.rffc.org/images/cthulhu-rising.jpg Maybe a mutated form of Ancistrus ranunculus?

At feeding time you would have to chant: "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" in order for it to come to the surface.

I wouldn't object to an Asterophysus batrachus with the colours of a Botia macracantha (clown loach). The fish already has a clownish grin....

TalenT,
An HP Lovecraft fan? He was sicker than the rest! I bet he could've come up with some lovely fantasy cats.
Amanda

bronzefry - yup, i first read the works of HPL as a kid, probably about 10yrs old. Currently reading his collected works (for the ?th time), this time the annotated versions by S.T. Joshi. Very interesting to get to know the background and influences to his storys. Thinking of getting a breeding pair of Ancistrus sp., naming them "father Dagon" & "mother Hydra" and call all the fry "Deep Ones"

I wonder what writers of the past would think of some of the species known to us now.

It couldn't have been bad (at least for your imagination) to live in a time where you thought there was a possibilty of running into a griffon, a unicorn or a dragon either

(ofcourse HPL didn't live THAT long ago)

Might have been like almost living in one of those Harryhausen movies.