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Created new profile for review

Approve
Good info, minor spelling errors: "african", "recieve", "protien", "enourmous", "patternation".

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Approve
Approve, nice detail

Approve
Though there are a couple of things that will need to be changed, it is written up well. Your size is way off. These fish get upwards of 90+ cm, or around 3 feet long, not the 45 cm or 18 inches posted. Mine was 4 years when it died, and was 24 inches. The tail is also flat, only giving the appearance of being forked when not fully expanded. But when fully expanded it is flat.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Ill agree on the tail,on this species it does look flat although others closely related to this fish have some clearly forked tails,and i can still see two distict lobes on the tailfin of my specimen, the way it is supported and folds looks to me like a forked tail giving an illusion of a flat one, but hey, ill roll with it. To me its just a forked tail with rounded tips.Im not sure either discription or forked or flat really does its description justice.

But as for the size, are you sure you didnt have a Chrysicthys brachynema,or an Auchenoglanis biscutatus, most of the good literature ive read concurs with an average length of about 45 cm for this particular species. Looking at mine developmentally I can see maybe two feet coming up, but three? Morphologically and in terms of structure it would have to totally change its physionomy to change to support that weight and size. In captivity I dont think many Auchenoglanis occidentalis would break two feet, I think these bagrids are like a lot of the pimelodids , in that they rarely reach the sizes attained by their wild counterparts anyway. Ive been watching this catfish in the place i purchased it from for two months, its not been underfed and was in fact kept in an entirely appropriate sized setup, and its grown maybe a cm at the most in that time.I'll agree with you in thinking that 45 cm is a conservative estimate, I think there is a record to be easily broken there. Sure ive seen pictures of people holding huge bagrid catfish, but under close inspection they prove either to not be Auchenoglanis occidentalis at all, or the person holding the fish is of small stature to make the photo look impressive.One of the famous pictures of a giraffe catfish being held by an african woman was debunked. She was in fact only 4ft 6 in height herself, meaning the fish was only approoaching 2 feet.

Im wondering of yours could have been the correct species, dying at four years old, etc, and 24 inches? It had to be old or wild caught. Did it ever have the strongly reticulated pattern?

Quite aside from trying to disprove anything , id love to see a piccy of it anyway! Sounds like a beast!

I regularly visit a Chrysicthys brachynema at bristol zoo, over 15 years old and three feet long, but the adult forms are similar.I can see where people get confused. Ive seen a few Auchenoglanis occidentalis captives now, and not one of the genuine species was over two foot , and one specimen ive seen was over 10 years old. Its actually my goal to try and bring my specimen on to a size over two feet,which I believe is possible, especially with a large enough body of water, but I dont honestly think it will be easy.

Actually, mine died of a massive ick outbreak. I lost my 3 foot silver arowana that was over 12 years old at the same time. With larger fish, sometimes it is way to late to treat the fish when you first notice the outbreak. As well, it is very hard to treat a 2,000 gal tank with the fish in it too! lol. This is the reason I never feed feeder goldfish to anything anymore. And I push the nightcrawlers and red worms as you may recal me stating in some of the threads I believe you posted in as well.

As for the size of the cat, I got him at about 4 inches, and raised him up to size. I know PlanetCatfish states they get very large as well, and I know of a few other sites stating this too. As for the appearance and reticulated markings, mine looked identical to yours in the pic, when I first got him. As he got older, his spots faded quite a bit, but never completely left. They were the larger spots, unlike the smaller more abundant of the biscutatus. And when I got him, he was listed as an occidentalis, and as a giraffe cat.

As for pics, I had mine many years ago and don't think I have any pics hiding anywhere. I know I have some pics of my arowana that I scanned in years ago, and I will have to look and see if any have him in it.

As for that debunked picture, I am asuming you are refering to the one on PlanetCatfish, I agree about the size of the person holding it. But, the fish does appear to be at least 2 feet and appearance wise or the fish only, I would be guessing it closer to three feet. When I first saw that pic a while back, I actually wondered more about how strong the little girl was to hold a fish of that size/weight so easily, as it appears she is doing in the picture.

As for the size you are recommending, do you have any links or lists of documentation to support your findings? I would not be so apt to want the size changed, if there was some documentation stating otherwise.

One reason to keep it the way it is, is if we had scientific or studied documentation stating the fact, then we can back it up. While on the other hand, one reason to change it, would be to not go against other very repitable sites stating the larger size. This could/can cause a conflict with members that frequent other sites as well as ours. This is my main reasoning for the possible change of the size.



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There is always a bigger fish...

Been researching the size issue for the last 20 hours or so and finally found the explanation.

Basically we have subgenera most people are not aware of , namely:

Auchenoglanis occidentalis occidentalis
Auchenoglanis occidentalis tanganicanus
Auchenoglanis occidentalis tanganyikanus
Auchenoglanis occidentalis tchadensis
Auchenoglanis occidentalis tchadiensis

And yes , I know the above latin names just looks like german speakers arguing with english speakers over latin translation, but they are all apparently different fish, with four out of the five described in about 1840, and the last one described in 1966. (bloody scientists innit!)So as if it wasnt hard enough to tell em apart anyway, they go and make the latin names damn near the same too. My head hurts.

Genetically and morphologically speaking theres no more difference between them than there is between a grizzly bear and a kodiak bear, basically its minute differences due to distribution seperation over a relatively short period of time.

The tanganyikanus are huge getting up to 70cm or so,possibly even more,supported by the huge numbers of shellfish present in lake tanganika the others are all 45cm or less, and judging by several surveys done on surveys of the volta region the average size for river specimens is approximately 30 cm, with one in 40 or so breaking 39cm.Auchenoglanis occidentalis occidentalis
is a 45 cm species.

So basically we have 5 distinct fish , all identical to anyone who doesnt regularly dissect giraffe cats for a living, and the size depends on where the stock was sourced from, with two different sized species in the rift lakes alone.

Since no-one in the hobby will be able to tell them apart , unless of course they have a specimen over 45 cm in which case it will likely be a Auchenoglanis occidentalis tanganyikanus , ill amend the profile to 70 cm and make a note of the species size differences in the comments and variants section.

Can , worms, opened. Theyll be arguing this one in catfish forums for weeks

Anyway, since I only put occidentalis in the latin name, id better give a quick overview of the sizes since multiple profiles for fish with an identical look, keeping requirement etc would be pointless.

Perhaps I should just keep it simple and say that those from the rift lakes are basically near double the size of those sourced from river systems.

Whatcha reckon?

I also discovered that in the rift lakes , shellfish make up to 40% of the diet of full size specimens , so I might add that in the feeding section too. I also found out a hell of a lot more about the breeding too, stuff like digging flat disc pits up to three feet across, while in rivers they usually lay under underwater outcrops and roots.

Whatcha reckon?

I liked all your comments on the research and all your ideas for changing it later. Very nice job in the research dept. (now if we could just get others posting profiles to do research like this, lol)

And yes, it gets so confusing with all those scientists that want to have their "name claimed to fame" over all the others. It does crack me up sometimes when I see the most minute differences between something, being strongly argueed over between those scientists. After all, a theory being just an idea on something, and does not have to be proved, but disproved. With this in mind, it is easy to see how they all work on being the one with the better theory, wether it ends up being correct or not.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Approve

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