Banding in ariids

[sidguppy]

that would be a challenge indeed, keeping a shoal of estuarine half a mettre catfish in a tank.....

not exactly suited for the average home tank then


shame. IMO Ariids are among the best looking catfishes around and this particular species looks stunning.

about banded Arius; in the book I have about Madagascar cichlids (the one from Patrick De Rham and Jean Claude Nourissat) there is a catfish called "Arius madagascariensis" that has distinct bands.

is this a true species or does it go by another name today?

according to sources (that book and people who catch them) it's a freshwater species or at least stays in freshwater up to a fair size.

[Silurus]

I don't recall seeing distinct bands in A. madagascariensis when I reviewed the ariid catfishes of Madagascar with John Sparks, but that may be because I was not aware of its live color.

[sidguppy]

well, it might be a wholly wrong ID'd fish

the guys who made the book are cichlid enthousiasts, not catfish people like us.

but the Ariid in the pic is banded

i'll check up when I'm home, haven't got the book here
;)

btw tnx for the link, HH!
yet another one for my steadily growing collection of catfish pdf's

[sidguppy]

right, here goes:

the book is:
"The endemic cichlids of Madagascar" (original: 'les cichlides endemiques de Madagascar' with accents on some e's which I don't have on my keyboard)
by Patrick de Rham and Jean-Claude Nourissat

ISBN 2-9513502-0-2, december 2002

the Arius in question is portrayed on page 152
2 pictures which show 3 fish, they are freshly fished and still alive or only recently dead

picture #1:
the 2 bigger ones are lying in a woven basket; given the size of reed those baskets are usually made of, I'd say the catfish have a TL of 25-30 cm
they have orange fins, apart from the dorsal, a silvery body with metallic small bands on the upper half of the body, and the typical headshape of Arius

they're definitely not Anchariids.

picture #2:
this somewhat smaller fish is handheld, most likely by the fisherman that caught it; it's a local (Malagasy people are quite dark and both writers are white Europeans)
the fish is anything between 20-25 cm TL and contrastingly banded on both upper half and lower half of the body; interesting is that the bands are staggered; the markings are quite visible

checking the proportions, this is likely a subadult or younger fish when compared to the larger ones in pic 1.


the accompanying text states that this species is a freshwater species and according to local fishermen it mouthbreeds the eggs.
which fits from what we know about Ariidae in general.

[Silurus]

The phtograph of a freshly dead Arius festinus here shows faint banding on the body. Maybe all the freshwater ariids from Madagascar are banded.

The banding is very pronounced only when the fish is out of the water (at least for H. sagor, so it is likely to be some form of stress coloration.

[sidguppy]

too bad I don't know anyone with a scanner, those seem to have disappeared; otherwise I'd scan the pictures for Planetcatfish

however I think I'd need to have permission from Patrick de Rham to pull that off

Jean-Claude unfortunately isn't with us anymore, he passed away some years ago, due to malaria