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lol...yeah they do! The tank also has two angels a school of clown loaches.

I was not interested in keeping these fish, but they woman working at the carwash was not in charge of the tank and i was just wondering what kind of fish they were. Thanks so much for all your help!

Leporinus species get very nippy if you keep them singly. They need to be in a shoal. Even then they are sneakily aggressive, and can hold their own even with bruisers like Green Terrors and Jaguar Cichlids, which makes them ideal dither fish for big, aggressive Cichlids.

However, Leporinus will shred plants, and are rocket-propelled jumpers. Better keep them very tightly covered, because if you don't, their aerobatics are spectacular. They're also tough as old boots. The following anecdote from the venerable Innes book illustrates these features nicely:

Just to give an idea both of its acrobatics and its toughness, an incident in the Battery Park Aquarium in New York will demonstrate both. One of them jumped obliquely upwward a distance of 5 feet, landing in a marine aquarium of a different temperature. After several hours it was returned undamaged to its own tropical fresh-water aquarium.

The combination of head-down attitude and seemingly sluggish movements can cath the unwary off guard. But, as Innes says in the same piece on this fish, the worst jumpers, such as Pantodon buccholzi and the Blue Gularis killifish, are apparently slow movers.

Leporinus fasciatus and several similar species will exceed 8 inches with ease. Leporinus frederici reaches a whopping 18 inches. There are several interesting Leporinus species, all of which are tough, robust, and sneakily aggressive, likely to nip the fins of long-finned fishes, and they are best kept with other robust, aggressive fishes. A shoal of 6 or more will reduce somewhat their nippy tendencies, but not by much. Also, Braz walker in his piece on Leporinus nigrotaeniatus (which is a handsome fish) says that they'll rip many plants to pieces, and are likely to be bad tempered toward smaller fishes and those fishes perceived to be weaker than themselves. They need vegetable matter in the diet: celery tops are a good dietary addition, along with alfalfa rabbit food pellets.

If you plan on keeping these, they need LOTS of space. In the case of frederici, you're looking at 500 gallons as a baseline set up.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

This is so funny I have 2 of each in the same tank.
They are nippy and hilarious to watch.

from the descriptions of the aggressions and all that they sound like gigantic tiger barbs

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''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

Dang, for some reason I was thinking of body forms when they weren't mentioned in the post... Leporinus and Prochilodus should've been obvious...:%)

They're both pretty hefty fish, even moreso than Bala Sharks. Although Leporinus are aggressive, if I'm not mistaken this is what occurs when kept alone; if kept in a group they are able to spread around their aggression amongst themselves. Pretty nippy fish, regardless.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

I have a leporinus, if you buy them as babies and raise them with, lets say sa cichlids, they arent too badly behaved, but there still agressive fish.

I was just testing you...

I've found them to be less nippy than their striped leporinus brethren. To each his or her own, I suppose.

I was talking about the Leporinus in my post.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I've only ever worked with one shipment of prochilodus--they are uncommon at best.

I've found them to be less nippy than their striped leporinus brethren. To each his or her own, I suppose.

Also, they reach a moderate size of maybe 14", but are very rowdy.



Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 12-May-2005 22:13

They get huge and they are pretty aggressive as well. The minimum tank size I would recommend is a 300 gallon, and even then you would have little room for tankmates.

At work we got a 4" specimen in, and it was so mean we couldn't even keep it with the African cichlids. So we put it in the 300 gallon with several large 16" pacu and a 25" redtail cat. We were sure it was going end up as catfish chow, but an hour after putting it in it was chasing the catfish around the tank and biting its fins. Fianlly somebody bought it after a week or so.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Today i was at my favorite car wash (since they have HUGE freshwater fishtank) and i was wondering if you could identify a few of the fish. Two were pretty large, liek about 10 inches and they were vertically striped yellow and black. The other GIANT fish had a silvery gold body with an orange and black striped tail and red fins. It had a circular shaped mouth. Thanks for your help in advance!

Your car wash has good taste in fish.

And the other fish was definitley a Semaprochilodus taeniurus. Does anyone know the common names for these fish and any other info? He was huge!

cory addict that is definitley the fish. Does anyone know anything abou them? They looked cool. I know i don't have a tank big enough for them, but i just love learning new stuff lol!

Semaprochilodus taeniurus.

I was also thinking of leporinus.

Could the striped fish be a Leporinus species?

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

were they anything like these?

[link=http:// www.aquariumfish.net/images_01/datnioides_2.jpg]http:// www.aquariumfish.net/images_01/datnioides_2.jpg[/link]

[link=http:// www.tjorvar.is/assets/images/fish_Barbus_schwanenfeldi.jpeg]http:// www.tjorvar.is/assets/images/fish_Barbus_schwanenfeldi.jpeg[/link]

The striped fish sound kinda like Tilapia buttikoferoi, but I dunno about the third one...:%)

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

possibly a yellow lab and a parrot fish(?) Cichlids more than likely...get some pics or ask the people there, one of my favorite restaurants has labels and stuff up around the tank to help identify them...heidi michelle



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