BUmble bee cat fish..

think i just found out why my prize female pregnant guppy fish have been losing their fry...
not to mention I can not find my latest batch of newly hatched Bristlenose fry.

well two reasons, one being jewel cichlids were nipping their tails and picking them off one by one.

And then today I found out that a LFS sold me two bumblebee cat fish-now they look beautiful fish,
however and here is the big however, after checking out online it says they eat other fish under 3cms's. :face:

This might explain why my last two spawn of ancistrus have gone and all my female pregnant guppies
looked thin and there spawns had gone.

I remembered asking the LFS if the cat fish would be ok with BN and also guppies and they advised me they would.

That is another reason why you can not believe every thing you hear at the LFS...

No matter which site I checked the Bumblebee out on today - they state these fish are predators and can eat any other fish under 3cm's. As such I am now looking at passing them onto any one else who would like to lovely bumble bee cat fish, however they will need to be kept in a tank of at least 100cm's and other fish must be bigger than them.

I did I also say that it looks like I have a female and male bumble bee and the female appears to be full of eggs.
Not a bad thing really since these are supposed to be hard to breed in aquaria.

So what do you guys and girls think?

kind regards

LJ

Which Bumblebee catfish is it, the Asian catfish (Leiocassis Siamensis) or the South American (Microglanis Iheringi).

I'd imagine it's the Asian as it can grow to 15cms and is a night prowler that preys on resting fish. If it is it should be OK with anything it can't fit in it's mouth.

They are nice looking fish though.

The South American only grows to 10cms and is usually described as perfect for the smaller community tank.

to be using my fish keeping experience I would say it looks like the south american variety...
since it looks like the smaller breed, though trying to take a picture is proving difficult...lol..

I could swear the female is carrying eggs at the minute, well I assume it is the female since one
is much rounder under the belly compared to the other....

I find it a little strange it would eat guppies but not the Bristlenose fry now I have looked into it...

I do intend to move them into another tank when I move home shortly, then I will put them in a bigger tank
with bigger community fish, and possibly the albino sailfin pleco....

That way the only meaty food they will be having is the frozen blood worm I drop in for the L333 occasionally..

will let you know more, and when I come to drain the water off the tanks ready for moving I will try to take a picture
so we have something to identify when we chat about them in the future...

I must say they do seem to be getting on pretty well with the L71 peppermint pleco,
in fact some days they can be seen sharing the same cave....Though I know that is not good for breeding purposes..

Upon my moving hopefully the peppermints will be separated into two 3 groups, since I have 4 male and 4 female,
hopefully I will be able to have one male and two females in two breeding tanks and then the other two males I will
have in my show tank and also show them around the society meetings.

kind regards

LJ