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I'm planning a 150 gallon aquarium. My main focus would like to be Syno's. I want to have a school of syno lucipinnis around 12 of them.

I'm thinking about other species I could throw into the mix.

Would I have any problems adding syno brichardi or ablerti with lucipinnis?

I'm going with a african theme with this aquarium. I've already purchased enough african rootwood to fill the aquarium. There will be tons of hideing places. I'm also gonna use lots of anubias. It should be pretty cool. I'll post pics and vids this summer once it's set up.

I'm also gonna have some tang cichlids. I'm open to sugestions on other species of synos that might work.

Syno lucipinnis is a Lake Tanganyika species, which will mean hard, alkaline water.

The other fish you mention live in rivers, and would prefer soft, acidic water.

I don't expect them to cause each other problems, but they won't be happy with the same water...

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Mats

I'm not a catfish expert but I've been keepin fish for many years. I've never had problems mixing fish that came from different enviorments. From my experiance most will adapt with good water quality.

Take Bristlenose Plecos for example look how many people keep them with african cichlids.

I'm mostly concerned with any agression issues that might arise mixing species. I don't want my Syno Brichardi beating the brains out of my smaller Lucipinnis.

I guess I'll try it. If it don't work out I can always trade them in at the pet shop.

You seem to have your mind made up so I will leave the mixing alone...just want to give a warning, the luci's will adapt quite well but are the most sensitive of synos(that I know of)to chemicals and large scale changes...they are generally the first to react to changes in water chemistry and do not always recover if extreme.

Birger

The common B/n has become a hobby-bred, very adaptable species that will adapt to a lot of water conditions - but this is definately not true of all B/N species - some are very demanding indeed.

Personally i would not mix lucipinnis with non lake synos but would put them with multis,grandiops, polli, sp2, granulosa, nigromaculatus or njassae (but possibly not petricola).

Brichardi sometimes can have an aggressive streak & i have found them to bully all tang species except granulosa amd polli in smaller tanks and be high in the pecking order of congo species submitting to angelica, but hasselling schoutedeni.

There is a chance your proposed mix will work out ok but lucipinnis are highly sensitive to nitrate build up so this needs to closely monitored.

What tang cichlids are you thinking of? This may have an impact on selection of catfishes.

I was going to suggest a group of brichardi, a group of soloni, a big shoal of nigriventris, and maybe (if you can get them) a group of caudalis. You could add in pleurops or notata or schoutedeni as alternatives or brachysyno batensoda. Maybe even S.pardalis as they are appearing at the moment

If you wanted to keep alberti, i would mix these with flavitaeniata, schoutedeni, or nummifer. My preference would be to have good shoals of african tetras as the moveemnt in the tank - there are some great species about.

I would only add Tanganyikan species to the Synodontis lucipinnis, because of the required water parameters for them ( hard alkaline water).

I would add Tanganyikan species from the Claroteidae family (Phyllonemus/Lophiobagrus/Auchenoglanis).

I would even add some non catfish as Tanganyikan spiny eels :
(Mastacembelus elepsifer/frenatus/plagiostoma )

For instance this setup :
Synodontis lucipinnis 12x
Phyllonemus typus 3m/3f
Mastacembelus elipsifer 2x