By Jeff Michels, MAS

I’ve always had a special attraction to catfish and their relatives for as long as I’ve had fish. I can remember seeking out different Cory. catfish and trying to identify them well before I had access to photo indexes such as the Aqualog series and many other detailed "specialty" books. It was a fun, challenging way to feel on the cutting edge of the fish world. Looking back, I can’t even begin to imagine the number of different fish that I passed right by due to lack of knowledge and resources to realize that the fish were something different. So how does this relate to Synodontis, other then the catfish aspect? I’ll try to explain.

The story starts out about eight years ago, with my first acquisition of six young F1 Synodontis petricola. These cute little spotted cats were active and playful, such a contrast to most of the other Synodontis I had seen or had, who often hid and were generally not social with each other. After at least a year and a half of growing, my little cats were not so little and beginning to show signs of maturity. The females had become plump, filling up with eggs. I needed to begin tracking down more info on how to encourage spawning of these dwarf African cats.

Then it happened! No, not a spawn, but a malfunctioning heater and a tank full of rotting corpses. So ends my first experience with S. petricola. I tried to locate more specimens without success. It seemed that no one was having luck breeding the cats at this time. I even tried tracking down wild stock, but the fish that arrived were not the dwarf S. petricola, with a 4" fish being huge, but 6" and better specimens of what I think were S. polli. Not until a few years later was I able to purchase a group of five petricola.

These five fish were a curse and a blessing. I paid special attention to my little Synodontis, attempting to feed them well and researching different breeding techniques to help persuade these fish to spawn. Much to my bewilderment, most food was ignored or at best picked at with "up-turned" barbels. This included a sure-fire appetite stimulant, live black worms! What was going on? My home made version of a spawning cave, egg collector, and hatchery was seldom visited by the cats, despite it being the main structure in the 20 high aquarium (see www.planetcatfish.com for more details on the cave/egg collecting device). The only other decor included a sponge filter one or two river rocks and a lot of duckweed. After more then a year I conceded and let Kevin Korotev have a shot with this stubborn cat.

Shortly after Kevin received the cats he informed me of my problem, I had been working with five males! No wonder I wasn’t seeing any results. This also would explain the lack of interest in food and overall lethargic demeanor of the petricola while they swam in my tank. Kevin returned three of the males and kept two, which were added to a number of other petricola from other sources. If memory serves me right Kevin observed spawning activity frequently and even collected eggs. I think he even had several fry hatch, but they didn’t survive.

Then opportunity to have Synodontis petricola in my home showed up again. Kevin was switching gears and offered to sell me his group of cats. I jumped at the chance. This time I had boys and girls swimming around in a 40-breeder tank with a power filter at one end, my improved egg collector at the other and a mass of plastic plants floating around at the surface. I was amazed to see the difference in behavior between these fish and the all-male group I had before. These fish were active and playful and came complete with a ravenous appetite.

Despite a wide array of food options, frequent water changes, and what I thought were adequate if not excellent conditions, I was not being rewarded with the fruits of spawning. But I’m being greedy and impatient; I’d only had the fish for a few weeks. In an attempt to maintain population control and to feed the hungry, I placed 50-60 Hap. flameback eggs in the cat tank and stood back to witness a feeding frenzy. Then it happened! A few days later my little collecting cup and net was full of catfish eggs, at least 75. The eggs looked like tiny opaque pearls. I quickly removed the eggs and placed them in a dish filled with water from the adult tank and keep it circulating with an air stone. After two or three days all of the eggs hatched and I had a quivering mass of baby cats. Anther two days passed and the tiny petricola had consumed their egg yokes. The following day I checked up on the youngsters and couldn’t believe my eyes. They were all gone. Not dead, just done. After talking to Tom Wojtech I found out that the fry needed constantly circulated water to survive. This prompted a few modifications to my breeding cave/egg collector/hatching net to obtain the desired results. About a week passed before another spawn took place. With the new hardware and some sound advice, this batch of eggs hatched and the tiny fry grew. By leaving them in the breeder net the fish received a constant water change via the home made air driven water delivery system. An added bonus of fresh food to eat almost weekly was also included when freshly laid eggs were pulled into the net whenever the adults spawned. In addition to the caviar, I also feed newly hatched baby brine shrimp at least twice a day. I avoided the temptation of removing the fry and placing them into a tank, being scared that it might be too soon to relocate them and that I would end up loosing some or even all of the babies. This may have cost me several hundred additional babies over the next two months, but I was more concerned with raising the first batch of babies.

I’ll now try to explain the confusing part regarding the adult Synodontis petricola. As I mentioned earlier, trying to track down try S. petricola proved to be a challenge. At one point the only similar fish available were S. multipuntatus and S. polli, both being much larger species of fish then the petricola. The true challenge is trying to find good descriptions and pictures of what some of these spotted Synodontis actually look like. Unfortunately, this information doesn’t exist or at minimum is very scarce. The research on Synodontis in Lake Tanganyika hasn’t been done. Couple this fact with the reality that almost all the Synodontis cats in the hobby are wild caught and you have a frustrating mystery. Some of the time you get what you expect in terms of a particular species when a wild shipment comes in, other times you may get a completely undescribed animal with no way of tracking down a proper identity. In some cases the fish may be a known species but it looks different due to a new or different collecting location. Some times a single individual may be a "sport", a fish that has a mutated or individually unique color pattern. In many cases the fish in question is just plan scientifically undescribed. In the case of my 11 adult S. petricola I have two "types" of fish present. One variety has large blotchy spots all over the body with dark colored fins edged in white. Both males and females of this color form are present within the group. The other type I posses have small almost round spots with some of the individuals exhibiting the same colors in the fins and body as the blotchy spot form, while others of the small spot type show a very dark body color and a minimal amount of white in the fins and barbels. Unfortunately, I don’t know the exact origins of the individuals making up the school. Some are wild caught while others are tank raised. To make matters worse, I can't identify which individuals are spawning. My plans are to separate the different pattern types and attempt to raise fry from both types. Then I hope to be able to find out if the fry grow out to match their parents’ patterns or if both patterns are present in each batch of fry. The next step will then be to track down some wild caught animals and use these as a genetic starting point. By using wild fish I have a better chance of starting with "uncontaminated" genetic stock and have a better chance of working with one geographic color form. If I used tank raised individuals from parents of unknown origin I couldn’t assure that I was working with one population and I would end up with skewed data as to color pattern traits.

This may seem like a lot of extra work to discover just a tiny bit of information about a fish, and you would be right. But this is an aspect of the fish hobby that has a great deal of interest to me and a place while I feel I may be able to contribute to the over all shared knowledge in the hobby. Discoveries by a hobbyist can have a great deal of impact at the aquarist level and even at the scientific one. Sharing knowledge, observation, and understanding is what organized fish clubs are about.