Aluminum catfish help needed ASAP!!!

[Bristlenose 94]

ok i just bought one of these, and the guy at the lfs who is pretty knowlegable said they reach 8". thats what I thought as well. i just looked them up to get some more info on them and found that they reach over 2 feet!

my aquarium is only 38gals. is he gonna reach 2 feet or am i confused with another species?
I am beginning to think that I have C. auratus, which only gets to 13", but still... thats a tight squeeze for my tank.

please help me!

[Richard B]

what is the footprint of a 38 gal? ie length x width

a fish 8" long needs at least a 32 x 16 footprint, a 13" fish needs a 52 x 26 footprint & these are minimum recommendations.

[Shane]

We will need a photo to help you try to ID the fish. You also need to find out from your LFS where it was imported from to help us narrow the possibilities. The Nile population of C. auratus only reaches 22 cm. The West African subspecies will reach 30 cm.
-Shane

[Richard B]

to be fair, in most cases of trying to ID a fish, a pic is vital

[Bristlenose 94]

I'm working on it... called my lfs. the only person there for the rest of the day is this one girl who knows almost nothing... dont know why she hasnt been fired in the past year. she claimed that the store didnt know where any of its distributors got their fish. ill call tomorrow when the manager is in.

this little guy is too fast for pics! ill try to get a vid, and will attempt at getting pics. wont be easy though. hes more active than the pictus i used to have.

[Bristlenose 94]

these are the best pics i could get... should have a vid tomorrow.

[jippo]

Nice cat you have, these are one of my favorite cats.

Identification of these is very problematic, there is no revision of these(at least I haven't found and I have been asking about it here) and there is lot of misidentification in this genus. It's not even clear in which genus some of the species belongs. I have found that the best source for getting some reliable information about differences between these species are the books The Fresh And Brackish Water Fishes of Lower Guinea and the same fauna book from West Africa. Unfortunately there is missing some species which live outside the area of those books.

Anyway if you want to know exact species of your cat you may have to measure some important measurment like head lenght, pre-dorsal lenght, snout lenght, standard lenght etc. And even you got all the measurments you still have to know which area your fish has imported from. There are some differences between same species depending on which area they are from, some of the population of the same species that lives in rivers has different shape of dorsal and caudal fin compared to other population that lives on lakes. And also there are big differences in some species between juveniles and mature males, the shape of the head is totally different.

As I can see your cat might be C. auratus even it hasn't got longer first dorsal fin ray like it should have. Estuary of the Sanaga and Nyong population have reduced first fin ray but still the first soft ray is longer than other caudal fin rays, like your fish has.

[racoll]

Identification of these is very problematic

Indeed. Seegars (2008) is not really useful at all, giving few diagnostic characters. The fish above does look similar to the pictured Chrysichthys polli though, which is apparently imported from the Congo.

Hardman has done some work on

Chrysichthys

in recent years. I've not read the papers, so I don't know if they are any use here, but here are the references:

Hardman, M. (2008) A new species of Chrysichthys (Siluriformes: Claroteidae) from Lake Turkana, Kenya. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 157(1):25-36.

Hardman M. (2008) A New Species of Catfish Genus Chrysichthys from Lake Tanganyika (Siluriformes: Claroteidae). Copeia Volume 2008, Issue 1 pp. 43–56.

Hardman M., and M.L.J. Stiassny (2008) A sexually dimorphic species of Chrysichthys (Siluriformes: Claroteidae) from Lac Mai-Ndombe, Democratic Republic of Congo. Ichthyol. Explor. Freshwaters 19(2): 175-184.

[Bristlenose 94]

Today the first soft dorsal ray looks a bit more extended... was probably nipped off in the store adn just growing back now.

Can i see a pic of C. polli?

anyone else have an idea of what species ive got?

[Richard B]

Can i see a pic of C. polli?

There isn't a pic via google images - get your hands on a copy of seegars - see book review (The catfishes of Africa)

anyone else have an idea of what species ive got?

If the likes of Racoll & Jippo are not sure then i'd be surprised if there'll be anyone else out there who can say.

This is a seldom imported genera, with a few notable exceptions & identification of your species is going to be educated opinion only at this stage

[Bristlenose 94]

I don't wanna be blunt, but Iwont pay that much for a book... what are the chances of me finding it in a local library?

[Richard B]

I didn't necessarily mean to buy it, but it the only source i know of, with a pic.

Chances are, as this is a pretty specialist book, that libraries won't have it. I can only suggest that some specialist LFS might have a copy you could browse or someone local might be able to lend you a copy

[Bristlenose 94]

alright...

so, what might the growth rate be with this cat? theres a 21day guarantee on him so if i can get an i.d. and he turns out to be c. longipinnis or one of the other really big C. spp. then I'm gonna bring him back to the store. im just wondering if he'll grow enough that ill be able to i.d. him in 20 days.

[Bristlenose 94]

just called the lfs manager. he said tomorrow he'll ask his importer if they know the latin name of the cat... hopefully theyll know what theyre talking about... or at least where the cat came from.

[jippo]

Sorry but I can't see the point why do you have to see that photo of C.polli. Of cource you want to compare it with your fish but if you are not an expert with these you can't find any differences between polli and auratus. If the scientist can't see the differences between many species how is it possible for us? As I told you first thing is to solve origin of that fish and after that we do our best to help you with identification.

[Bristlenose 94]

right, thats why i called the lfs... i only asked to see the pic once.

i should have an answer to the question of where it was collected by tomorrow afternoon.

[racoll]

I'll try and scan the photo when I get time.

The problem is, all that it'll tell you is that C. polli looks similar to your fish. This does not mean your fish is C. polli though.

I suggested the name as it looked superficially similar, and it has been identified as a species exported from the lower Congo.

If your fish came from Nigeria though, then we could go with C. auratus, but this is based on an educated guess, rather than good evidence.

But, there are lots of other Chrysichthys too!

The best hope is too get lots more photographs, some information from the importers, and hope that Heok Hee (Silurus) picks up on this thread.

Nice fish though, and if it is C. polli, it apparently only gets to 14cm, so good for your tank.

[MatsP]

Just because it came out of nigeria doesn't necessarily mean it was caught in nigeria tho'.

--
Mats

[Bristlenose 94]

Ok, I'll keep you guys updated, and send a message to Silurus.
I've also been talking to the folks at wetwebmedia... im doing everything in my power to get this thing i.d.'d... mainly because I'm not giving this fish up easily and need to know how big its gonna get....

[Silurus]

I think the fish is Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus, which in itself is not good news as this species reaches to 650 mm SL.

[Bristlenose 94]

I think the fish is Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus, which in itself is not good news as this species reaches to 650 mm SL.

definitely not good news....
What about

Chrysichthys brevibarbis

?

[Silurus]

Chrysichthys brevibarbis is apparently restricted to the Congo River drainage. Given that your fish is West African, C. nigrodigitatus is more likely.

[Bristlenose 94]

alright....
damn. i thought i had a shot at this guy not topping 12".

[racoll]

Given that your fish is West African

HH, I don't think we've established that yet.

Bristlenose 94 hasn't clarified where the import came from yet.

Mats and I were just speculating:

If your fish came from Nigeria though, then we could go with C. auratus, but this is based on an educated guess, rather than good evidence.

Just because it came out of nigeria doesn't necessarily mean it was caught in nigeria tho'.

[MatsP]

As far as I understand, a lot of fish come out of either Nairobi (Kenya) or Lagos (Nigeria) when it's exported from Africa, whether it is caught in Western or Eastern Africa. This, again, from what I understand, is because these are big airports that have good connections to the rest of the world.

--
Mats

[Bristlenose 94]

I called my lfs 2 days ago and they said theyd find out what they could. Still no response.
Hopefully ill get some info today... Should i call them again or would that be rude?

[Bristlenose 94]

Another shot. hopefully this will be more helpful than the previous 3.

[jippo]

Very good shot! As we can see lower caudal fin lobe is longer than upper one, with nigrodigitatus and auratus it should be opposite. But in the other hand your specimen looks juvenile and it might be that the caudal looks like that with juveniles. It has black bordered fins like it should be with nigrodigitatus and auratus but adipose is without black border with your fish and that doesn't match.

I have three specimens of C. cf. nigrodigitatus but those are mature, two female and one male. Looks very much different comparing your fishes. Mine looks like the fish that has labelled C. furcatus in many books but that is a synonym for C. nigrodigitatus.

I will check more from my books when I get home.

[Birger]

I have three specimens of C. cf. nigrodigitatus but those are mature, two female and one male.

Jippo...I am wondering what the size of your mature specimens are.

[Bristlenose 94]

thanks for the compliments
That was taken during the 3 seconds that he was actually sitting still this morning, evidently it proved helpful.

I really appreciate your help with all this, and I hope that when this cat is properly i.d.'d I can send pics of it to the site's database.