Syno petricola M/F ratio?

[aquariam111]

I have 9 1" Syno petricolas in a 36x12 tank. What is the ideal male to female ratio? Or does not not matter much like cories? I'd like to end up with 5 or 6 adults.

[Birger]

Hello, and Welcome to PlanetCatfish!

Right off the bat we will make things more complicated for you...first you must discern if you have true

Synodontis petricola

or

Synodontis lucipinnis

fish many people are calling S.petricola are in fact the other, this coming to light only since 2006.

This may help a bit with that decision...http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... 3C%2Fem%3E

I suggest doing a forum search for information as there is a fair amount on these fish.

I have found for myself that females always seem to be less in numbers than males...so keep as many females that you find within your group IMO, unless you are lucky and have many(possible)

Birger

[aquariam111]

Definitely petricolas. My source is a stickler for accuracy. I also have very sharply pointed dorsal fins and no 'fin thing' before the caudal fin.

How does one sex them?

[Birger]

I also have very sharply pointed dorsal fins and no 'fin thing' before the caudal fin.

I am not really understanding what you are saying...are you saying no adipose fin?
look here http://www.planetcatfish.com/core/anatomy.php

How does one sex them?

Look about halfway down this thread http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =8&t=30121

Yours are way to small to sex or even to discern species but if tank raised most likely

Synodontis lucipinnis

I would bet your house on it



Birger

[andywoolloo]

some shots of my lucipinnis if that helps, page one has one and page two has all the rest.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... ilit=henry

[Richard B]

Definitely petricolas. My source is a stickler for accuracy. I also have very sharply pointed dorsal fins and no 'fin thing' before the caudal fin.

How does one sex them?

These are too small to ID correctly but a pic once grown will help us confirm ID.

A trawl through threads on PC will demonstrate that many people have been assured the fish they are buying are Petricola when in fact they are Lucipinnis - the Lucipinnis name is almost unknown in the trade although dwarf petricola is still used (which is lucipinnis).

As for ratios of sexes - it depends on your objectives? If you wanna keep them happy & no more then it is almost irrelevant.

If you want to seriously breed the fish in any numbers then i'd recommend three tanks - one for males , females in another & the third as a breeding tank where the best one of each are brought together for the spawning...

[aquariam111]

Ok cool. Thank you. I don't want to breed them it's more 'how many is a good group for them to be happy'. So five or six of any sex is fine then.

To make them comfortable a group of 5 or more is best,yes...the more the merrier!!

[aquariam111]

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b209/ ... 201512.jpg

My whisker pattern is different from this. They have one long left and right but no second long set. The remaining whiskers are in a clump on the bottom of the mouth. I'd get pictures if I could... so far I have several blurry grey things..

[MatsP]

They look pretty small - are they bred locally? If so, I'd bet a small amount that they are S. lucipinnis.

--
Mats

[aquariam111]

That picture is not my fish I was just saying mine have a different pattern to the barbels.

My fish were bred by someone near by. I honestly don't care whether I have lucipinnis or not. I can't really tell them apart for the most part. They are healthy and growing well and that's all that matters to me .

Any suggestions regarding foods wouldn't hurt though. They're in a very peaceful tang tank with paracyps and gobies. They have a nice cave system. pH 8 kH 10 gH is 8ish temp 80

[MatsP]

They will eat almost anything they are fed, and it's fine to feed them anything you would feed your cichlids.

If they are small, it may be quite hard to identify them anyways, but for every breeder of S. petricola, there are at least 10 breeders of S. lucipinnis.

--
Mats

[DJRansome]

The source of your fish may still be a stickler, but maybe a little old school? The Lucipinnis name came about fairly recently in the last several years (before the Lucipinnis was called dwarf Petricola) and I still see most of the vendors I use selling them under the old name.

[MatsP]

The source of your fish may still be a stickler, but maybe a little old school? The Lucipinnis name came about fairly recently in the last several years (before the Lucipinnis was called dwarf Petricola) and I still see most of the vendors I use selling them under the old name.

Absolutely. It takes MANY years before names are "soaked in" into the main audience.

--
Mats

[Scleropages]

Absolutely. It takes MANY years before names are "soaked in" into the main audience.

Ain't that the truth. Whenever I see S. angelica in a LFS around here, it is always labeled as "Synodontis angelicus." It's my understanding that this fish was identified as S. angelica in 1891. It's funny how these errors in nomenclature stick for so long in the trade.

[Birger]

Yes and no...many of the Synodontis were using the masculine form until shortly after The Checklist of Catfish came out in 2007...Synodontis angelicus was acceptable until then...at the moment though I would have to look up why it went from feminine to masculine way back then.

But...were moving slightly off topic...sorry aquariam111

Birger

[aquariam111]

Ok so I definitely have petricola. I have no 'tan' coloration whatsoever intruding into the anal fin. It is jet black. Also the white blaze around the caudal fin is pure white with no tan intrusion. It doesn't surprise me. The girl I got them from is too anal to make a mistake like that.