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Hello everybody!

I'm Imre from the Netherlands and i recently bought two Synodontis at a well know store in my country.
The two fish were in a 'mixed synodontis tank' from lake tanganyika.
Since I have a 2m tank with large 'fish' from lake tanganyika I thought it would be nice to add two Syno's.
I dont really mind not seeing them all the time, so only two of them doesn't really matter.
You can argue about the fact that it's wise or not to buy fish without a name, but these two really stood out from the rest of the syno's I saw.
I posted these images on a dutch site and everybody there thought these fish are Synodontis polli. I also think so, but i'm here to have this ID confirmed (or not). I only have doubts about the spots, they seem al little small and there are a lot of them. On all other pictures of polli's that i have seen, the spots are bigger and more widely spaced.

So, is this a Synodontis polli or not??

(the question is about the brownish fish not the blue one ) <- I like this smiley!

Hi Imre - welcome to Planet Catfish

The fish does look like polli, although perhaps not as typical as some - it looks a biggish fish - any idea of the size?

Looks like a big ol polli to me...looks to be quite large 15-20 cm is that correct?

Join in on this thread http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... ilit=polli
There is a link to pictures of warton's fish which could be very similar.

There are those, myself included, that think within fishes distributed as polli there are more species and/or regional variants.

Birger

I've seen these fish when they where bought, they are 15cm plus or so.

I have tried to measure them and the largest is indeed about 15cm.
I'm going to read the thread!

wow, he has a lot of teeth!

sure look like real polli to me

the huge overbite and upper lip and also the very visible numerous spiny teeth are all the characteristics of the true polli.
no other Tanganyikan Syno has this to such an extreme

all the species of the dhonti/poli/petricola/tanganicae clade have large upper lips and many teeth, but the true polli has this all in extreme

toass a handfull of adult pondsnails and ramshorn snails in there and you'll get a fair idea how effective this array of teeth and the enlarged upper lip are.

fish like these can eradicate a massive snail infestation within a few days........the only drawback is that they don't eat trumpetsnails IME.

Do polli's really grow this large?

So if i'd like to add a few polli's thats no problem? Isn't there something like local variants within the species of Synodontis polli, witch are not to be mixed up?
Since i've bought them they have both grown pretty large belly's. So I think I have 2 females.

Hey,

large belly should not indicate gender in synos. Simply they always eat like pigs - to be hones they will eat till there will be nothing left and if you put some food in again they will react to it as they were starving for months ;).

As Sid said yours are true thing .

There is for sure few fish of S. polli clade not described.
There is also S. sp polli "white Sambia" and S. ilebrevis.

Well gotta go ;). I'm starting electricity in my fishroom today ;p
Damn this hobby getting more and more expensive

worton[pl] wrote:There is also S. sp polli "white Sambia" and S. ilebrevis.

I believe there is also S. Polli "black kapampa" amongst probably a good few others

I don't fully understand your question of mixing "polli variants"/undescribed - if breeding was your aim this would be unwise

However if you just wanna keep them together it shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as you have caves/territory sorted. There is clearly a hierarcy amongst tang syno species, & polli is in the upper half, but they can be kept without too much bother in a species tank or mixed with other tang sp. This can take a little trial & error to perfect though.

I could decide in the future to buy an extra 3 or 4. Maybe for breeding or just for the looks of a bigger group of fish swimming around.
But I could imagine that I will never find the same variant as I have now.
You know what.........I'll just only keep these two...no worries
Thanks for the info!

oh, and I'll feed them a little less, they are indeed pigs!!

This is about 11cm SL. polli or lucipinnis?

Hi Steve

Looks more like a lucipinnis to me.

Another tell tale sign besides the ones mentioned is the lucipinnis have more of a reddish tint to them...the lighter polli, before going dark are more of a gold-brown which can be seen in the color of the polli in picture 4 http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=2274
(I am assuming your fish is darker in the picture than it usually is)

At the size of the fish shown I would think it would already have gone dark if it were a polli and would have thickened through the body, they do get quite thick and stubby looking when compared to lucipinnis.

Birger

Hi Steve

the fish pictured looks like lucipinnis, pale leading edges to the dorsal & pectorals (although not as vivid as some), a more streamlined body & smaller head, with the colouration not being as drab as in polli - ie not grey/brown. Basically i'm mostly repeating what Birger has posted.

so his pictures from the start of this thread with the big blue and black fish are lucipinnis? is that what you're saying? I was confused if you were identifying the first fish or the last posted pic.

I am still amazed by their teeth.

so his pictures from the start of this thread with the big blue and black fish are lucipinnis? is that what you're saying? I was confused if you were identifying the first fish or the last posted pic.

Imre's fish which is the first one is a polli, albeit a large variant.

The second fish from The DarkOne/Steve is lucipinnis.

Sorry about the confusion.

Birger

it's ok , just trying to learn from you all. do you think lucipinnis have such big teeth too?

According to Wright & Page(2006)

Polli has 40-70 mandibular teeth

lucipinnis 35-41

ohhhhh. thank you.

& also not as noticable in lucipinnis