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Today I had quite a nast surprize. When I woke up, went to the shower, I smelled something fishy in my house.

In one of my tanks, something which must have been a fish was floating, which due to its size, and shape, must have been a fish originally gotten as Pimelodella gracilis - but it was something else, it had grown to over 20 cm or more. It was definitely a fish belonginging to Heptateridae, with a easily curving body, long adipose and so on.

Clearly, it had been dead for a while, and the tank was in very condition. 3 Geophagus were freshly dead, Mesonauta and Hoplosternum were hanging on the surface. Later I found 5 floating Opsodoras

Earlier, I've had Heptaterus muslilineatus suddenly dying, and a fish gotten under the name Rhamdia species. All of these fishes I''ve had for only 2-3 years.

I also have had Brachyrhamdia meesi and B marthae, which did not live very long. They also grew fast.

After dying, I found Heptateridae decay rapidly, and as catfish do, they spend a lot of time hiding. Therefore it is all but easy to check on their well being, but if they are not well, the risks for the fish in the tank are huge.

Now I wonder, have other people had similar experiences? I wonder wheather to ever keep Haptateridae again - but I still have a group of 7 Rhamdia guatemalensis - which I already intended to sell, but I did not get any response.

The Rhamdia should be quite resilient. When I was a grad student, I kept a pair of Rhamdia that had been caught from a cenote in Mexico. The fish resided in an unheated tank in my basement office, which was not particularly well heated in the winter. To add to their woes, I used too much fine sand for substrate, which resulted in numerous anaerobic pockets and water that smelled of hydrogen sulfide. I never changed the water in the tank for about two years, and when I did, I found the substrate to be black due to the anaerobic reactions taking place (think mangrove mud and you have some idea what the substrate looked like). This didn't seem to bother the catfish, which had healthy appetites and grew to about 30 cm. When I graduated and left, they were still doing very well (I had moved the fish to better surroundings).

Bas Pels wrote:Today I had quite a nast surprize. When I woke up, went to the shower, I smelled something fishy in my house.

I usually find the fishy smell goes away once I've showered...

So, you're wondering whether Heptapterids are particularly oily or have some other significantly-toxic byproducts of necrosis? Would probably depend on their diet, but certainly some fish stink the place out worse than others of comparable size, suggesting that if detectable differences exist to our senses, then this it might be reasonable to suppose that this is even more so within the confines of an aquarium.
Ancistrus and Mbuna always turn my stomach once they have joined the choir invisible.

I think both the above replies did miss my point.; So I think I should explain what I meant.

Heptaterids are fast growing fish, and most fast growing fish do not get very old. Further, flesh which grew rapidly does detoriate much faster than flesh which did develop more slowly.

Add to this the fact that Haptaterids hide and we have fish which do not live long - so we would like to check themn regularly, but they keep hiding. Further when they do die, we have huge problems, rapidly.

This has nothing to do with any poison in them, or with special concerns about their health - just with the other fish in their tank