One Dollar Cutie or Nightmare: A Financial Riddle

[Even]

Hello guys, I'm Even, and I'm from Jakarta, Indonesia

So, I've just seen these pair of bumblebee catfish (any species of those are quite rare here, actually) auctioned locally on Facebook. Since the auction hadn't had a participant yet, I figure if I could join it before 22:00 Jakarta time (15:00 GMT) tomorrow, I might get them for less than a dollar. Of course, before risking a massacre of my South American tank, I'd like to ensure that these are the more docile Microglanis iheringi rather than the nightmarish Pseudopimelodus spp. Past that time, and this will (merely) be a very interesting exercise in pseudopimelodid identification

Without further ado, here are the fishes in question:


Additional info: said as being 10 cm in length and eats fish fry (horrible practice, I know. This is Indonesia, after all)
Thanks for your help, good people

[Bas Pels]

The are NOT Microglanis. Further, most Microglanis don't reach 8 cm, let alone 10.

Can't say positively they are Pseudopimelodus, but that is another matter

[Jools]

Pretty sure they are young

Pseudopimelodus bufonius

or similar.

Jools

[N0body Of The Goat]

Pretty sure they are young

Pseudopimelodus bufonius

or similar.

Jools

Just reading that profile, they almost sound like the South American equivalent of Chrysichthys ornatus.

It still amazes me to this day that before pulling my adult (~21cm SL at time, now bigger) C. ornatus out of my larger African community tank ~3.5 years ago, from what I can tell, I still have a full compliment of fish that could easily have been swallowed (4x Euchilythys spp.; 3x Synodontis brichardi; 1x Synodontis schoutedeni; 1x Xenomytus negri) for two years or more!

[Bas Pels]

Perhaps you provided these catfishes with suitable hidingplaces - that is, small enough to not enable the predator to enter, thus realy providing safety.

I had a few times problems with seeing too much young cichlids survive. As I only use stones to build shelters, these have a lot of small holes where these meet, enabling small fishes all hinding places they could whish for. Adding a catfish predator (Rhamdia sp) did not help, the catfish ate in darkness, when the cichlids were deep in their hiding places

I think your catfish had a similar advantage. After all, bumble bee catfish are very nocturnal, that is, they only appear when darkness is full.