@FreshwaterIchthyology

4 years ago

Pimelodus pictus are lovely and it's brilliant to see someone recommending they require shoals as their often sold alone. I keep a few Aspredinidae, there is a larger species in that family which is sometimes available Platystacus cotylephorus, I've shown mine in a few videos but I personally wouldn't house them with any cichlids that are likely to pick them up and at night they can be very active. P. cotylephorus are also more hard water and do like a lot of flow. Good on you for using the correct scientific name for Megalechis thorcata, so many people are stuck calling them Hoplosternum but the genus was revised quite a long time ago now. The whole subfamily is great Dianema spp. does get smaller but very manageable although Lepthopolosternum and Callichthys are pretty rare and I think in the UK no Callichthys spp. have been imported for years. Brochis was synonymised with Corydoras in a paper by Britto in 2003, so all Brochis are currently Corydoras. So it's Corydoras multiratiatus rather then Brochis multiradiatus. Brochis will only be resurrected once Corydoras is entirely revised which means the genus as we know it will be separated into around 9 other ones. A lot of people aren't aware that the majority of Synodontis spp. in the trade are captive bred hybrids usually farmed using hormones, some of the rarer species are wild caught and therefore pure. It's a common misconception that a lot of Synodontis spp. are from the Rift Valley lakes, only a handful are and the majority are softer water fish much more similar to Corydoras. There are also a lot of shoaling species within the genus such as S. nigriventris.

12 |