Batrochoglanis raninus in a community tank

[Marc van Arc]

My LFS has been very active with regard to catfishes lately.
Two weeks ago they had Batrochoglanis raninus. About 5 cms and very cute. My 10 year old son liked 3 of them for his community tank and I didn't object. It had been 20 odd years since I last kept one.
Apparently people tend to forget things after some time.
But it all came back very quickly after my son complained he couldn't see all of his Hemigrammus erythrozonus anymore and some Rhinogobius were lost too. Although he witnessed the huge bellies of the Batrochos, he couldn't link that to the missing fishes and blamed the Botia striata (which were indeed not very nice). So did I (white lie).
I decided to get everything out of the tank so I could see which fishes were missing. Result in hardly 12 days: 7 H. erythozonus and 3 Rhinogobius spec. were eaten by the 3 little rascals.
After I told him 10 fishes had disappeared, my son, although a little sad about his losses, quickly went to his tank to watch the Batrochos. "Look at them being fat! They really like it here". Uhmmm, right

[Shane]

They are little assassins in the community tank. I had a similar experience many years ago and I remember Lee Finley telling me he had one eat a Farlowella that was much longer. Took the bumblebee cat several days to swallow the entire Farlowella if I remember right.
-Shane

[grokefish]

You are so lucky, along with jaguar cats these are my all time favorite catfish and one of the fish I have been searching for for years and you got three of them at once. I have only seen this fish once and it was when we were on our way to holiday earlier this year, on the way back it was gone. Any time I see microglanis for sale in a shop I spend hours hoping to find a contaminant in with them which my missus gets seriously fed up with.
Have you seen the albino one on the auction site? $10000 that is surely a mistake!

[Marc van Arc]

I wish I could help you out. He still has 10 specimen in stock.

Have you seen the albino one on the auction site? $10000 that is surely a mistake!

I have. I know taste is personal, but I prefer the "normal" variety. They cost a little less too: 3 for 6 pounds.....

[grokefish]

I'm off on another contract today for about 3 weeks and I shall be passing pier aquatics on my way up, and back down so maybe I'll be lucky this time.
http://www.pieraquatics.co.uk/
They have a section which is dedicated to south american fish and I've heard it's biased towards catfish so fingers crossed.