My new Synodontis Petricola

Finally got my hands on 2x wild caught Petricolas! I was hoping to take some decent pics of them in the tank with the camera but they are enjoying their new caves too much at the moment!
Anyways here are a couple that I snapped on the phone just before they were introduced. Really pretty!

 

Yeah they were pretty pricey but I managed to get them for cheaper than you! I paid R225 each- was lucky to get them though as they were not actually for sale but part of some wild caught breeding stock that I managed to wrestle away from the owner...:bigsmile:

 

@Boomslang, Very nice looking fish man. I like the white tips on the fins. You don't see those every day. Nice find.

 

Thanks SloMo- I must say that the photos really dont do them justice. They are stunning in real life- the white tips look amazing- almost looks painted. The fiance never liked any cats/ plecos etc but these have immediately become her firm favourite. Nuff said! ;-)

 

ah you're lucky to have found those! Been looking for more for ages here in PE to no avail. Def my favourite Syno... once they're settled and the lghts are dimmed a bit they'll cruise all over your tank

 

They magic looking fish, but I know what you mean when it comes to taking photo's of them, they always hiding. I have S.angelicus which I have been trying to get pics of and it's almost impossible.

 

Very nice! I hope they pose for you nicely once they settle in!

 

nice find..hope you manage to breed them..be careful if you have any breeding malawis in your tank...syn.petricola are known to eat eggs while cichlids breed

 

Hey Sarf

Yeah I read about that- something I will have to try and keep an eye on!

 

Congrats boomslang, very cool cats :wink:.

This is what make them such fascinating fish to me.
This type of breeding is also seen in cuckoo birds, that's why syno's are sometimes known as cuckoo catfish.
But apparently they only select certain types of Haplochromis mouth brooding cichlids.

Here's a good vid by Nat Geo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnvbVIcZZHc

,and a nice link to breeding syno's from scotcat.com.
http://www.scotcat.com/articles/article24.htm

Hope you get a breeding pair out of them.

 

Thanks for the link Good_Times. The Nat Geo clip is really cool- first time I have actually seen footage of the baby synos in the cichlid mouth. Would love to know how they videoed it!

 

I also have two and I love them! Mine were only R60 each! This makes me wonder if they are perhaps hybrids, though they do look identical to true petricolas (though I've heard that sometimes hybrids can).

 

Me too, wonder if they filmed in lake tanganyika or an aquarium.

Photos can help a lot.

 

Oh, and to add - that Nat Geo clip is from a old documentary that I grew up with, titled "Jewels of the Rift", and is about Lake Tanganyika cichlids. The synos in the documentary are not Petricolas (the "false cuckoo catfish"), but are Synodontis Multipunctata (the true "cuckoo catfish"). Here's a picture of Multipunctata - they look quite similar to Petricola and I guess one could be forgiven for confusing the two, especially if you do not know about the two species.


...And here's a picture of Petricola - note the differences! (larger eyes on Multipunctata, and shorter, more tapered head and body - at least in my opinion anyway)


Both Petricola and Multipunctata exhibit the same breeding behaviour.

These are pictures of one of mine. Unfortunately I only have from this angle. I could swear she's a gravid female...

 

Sweet post- yes from what I have read the petricola does sometimes make use of the multi cuckoo manner of spawning but it is actually mostly an egg scatterer. Ideally I would have liked to have njassae in order to keep the tank a true biotope but they just get too big and it would be unfair on both them and my mbunas in a couple of years time. At least petricola is rift lake and to be honest it is also a lot prettier than njassae as well.

I havent read too much about hybridisation although I have heard that a lot of lucipinnis are incorrectly sold as petricola. Nevertheless to my untrained eye your at first looks like petricola. Absolutely sweet price if they are! I trust the guy I got mine from and he said that he landed them from his contacts at Tanganyika for about R150 each. Maybe yours are F1 that were sold without knowledge of their true value... sounds a good deal to me! At that price I would buy another 5! They are so pretty in the tank.

OK- having now tried to understand the difference between petricola and lucipinnis my (very untrained) eye lends me to think that your syno is the latter? The differences are tiny and I really think that this might be a comparison that I am not qualified to make. However, the one main difference that I have read on a catfish site between the two is that lucipinnis has a more haphazard pattern of dots compared to the petricola which are more lined up. Also the spots on the head are slightly bigger and less densely packed than on petricola. Further although both have a 'black triangle' at the base of all of their rayed fins, lucipinnis has an extra lighter coloured area at the base of the triangle. However there is also scope for a fair amount of overlap in these identifying features.
Apparently the best way to tell them apart is to that petricola has an axillary pore while lucipinnis does not but I wont even go there!

I guess that what I am trying to say is that your syno seems to lack a pattern when it comes to the dots and from the first photo it seems to have the lighter window at the base of the anal fin. Could this maybe mean that your syno is lucipinnis?

 

@Boomslang - wow, thanks for that info! Did you find this site too? http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworld/shanesworld.php?article_id=418
After having a read through, I'm also pretty sure that I have lucipinnis, and not petricola (The bodies look shorter than petricola, spots larger and more random, and I can spot that "window" on one of them). :laugh: Hope I was not ripped off, although R60 still sounds like a decent price.