Farlowella Long Nose Catfish (Twig)?

Has anyone ever kept the Farlowella Long Nose catfish or Twig Catfish? I'm looking at these and they seem very interesting, but I'm a little concerned about whether they're finicky. The article I read shows pretty wide ranges for temp, ph, & hardness, but with regard to care, "Some parts of it are very simple and straightforward, and others are a bit tricky." Consistent water quality is key. I have no problem with that, but want to get a sense from others who have kept them what their experience was.

Anyone had these fish before? What are they like?

I was considering a thread to see if anyone else liked these.

I've kept Farlowella acus, and keep Acestridium colombianus and Sturisoma aureus. I have a shot at getting two other Farlowella sp, around Christmas, and will go for it if I can.

They are kind of like Loracarids/plecos, but not. They're nicer! (he ducks, as pleco lovers throw snail shells at him)

I find they need current - as much as your tank can handle pleases them. I've had eggs from royal Farlowella and acus, but always in communities so the larvae didn't make it. This time, my twig catfish (only here for a few weeks) are quite young, so I can grow them and set up tanks for them to breed.

They can be delicate in sludge water, and they can be hard to feed. They're a bit like Otocinclus can be - they often don't adapt to prepared foods, and need a little extra attention, and algae. They seem to come from slightly higher elevations than Loracarids generally do, which means a little cooler water, and current. I watched a video shot by an athletic, tall, very strong 200 pound friend who filmed Farlowella sp in nature, and a few seconds into the video, he got swept downstream by the flow they lived in.

Mine are in long thin 40s - 4 footers - with an HOB at one end, and a powerhead beside it.

If you decide to get some, I'd be interested in discussing what you do with them, and sharing what I'll try. They're very underrated fish.

Interesting. I've been thinking a lot about flow. I have a Fluval FX4, so I think the flow can be pretty high, but I'm going to have angelfish too, so I'm not sure I can set it up to accommodate both. I was planning to use a spray bar below the surface (don't use it now, but still cycling), but that might reduce the flow to the point where the twig catfish doesn't thrive.

They are really cool, though- I wonder if I could just point the "duck bills" on the water return in such a way that would provide good flow for the twigs at one end of the tank, but leave at least half the tank with a more gentle flow?

Welcome your thoughts on it.

Experiment. That would be my answer. I've noticed my newish Acestridium like hanging where the water is moving and oxygen rich, but not where the power head creates turbulence. A good flow in nature doesn't hit glass, and that turbulence really distorts a lot of my set ups. I can't afford huge tanks and laminar flow pumps, as cool as that would be.

I think your idea would work. But I can't say for sure.

I’ve always liked them, and 20 years ago our good local fish store often got the royals in… I just never had a tank right for them… I could have put a few in my current South American tank that one has a lot of flow, 2 Aquaclear 70’s and 2 power heads on a full under gravel, but all are positioned to flow into the short distance, not across the tank, so it gives the appearance of not much flow… I also have angels in that tank I decided to add a fancy pleco, and there are 2 Oto’s left from the previous set up, and a Zebra Oto, that I’ve had for about a year… they are loving this new setup when I get the next tank going, maybe I’ll move my pleco, and add a few???

I would agree, not everyone can keep an Oto, but if you can, I would think the Farlowellas should be about the same

I highly recommend Dan’s fish… they currently… oops, sorry, should say regularly carry, but are currently out of stock on 2 species…

The dwarf green looks pretty interesting

I kept and spawned one Farlo species. They are often hard to ID as you nned to count belly scutes and rostrum shape and size to get a good ID. I kept the farlos them in my high tech planted tank with pressurized CO2. I had now clue about their spawning habits. They laid the eggs on the front glass and I was expecting to see wigglers like I did with my plecos. That is nit how they work. The tiny fry develops eniterly insid the egg. You can see how they develop as they turn the eggs darker as they grow inside.

And when they hatch, it is not all of them at once. Not knowing this I was excited to start seeing the fry on the glass and then they got eaten. The next spawn I pulled the eggs to a trap and they hatched there, I can say that of all the fish which have spawned in my tanks, the farlo fry were the hardest to raise. The pics below are from two different spawns. The first pic shows the 3 I started with but I lost the spawning male. Fortunately the 3rd one was another male.









Here are some poor pics of he whiptail pair. I originally bought them mislabelled. I got them because their Latin is my last name with an i at the end. It turns out they were a different whiptail. I got a surprise spawn on the bottom glass of a bare bottom tank, I never saw babies. Sorry for the poor pic. And yes, they laid green eggs, but no ham. I posted it all on Plantet catfish and was told what they really were. It was years ago and I forgot the name



Neither of the tanks above had particularly high flow. The farlos were in a 50 gal with an Eheim Pro II 2026 canister.

I gave a bunch of the babies to a skilled fish friend and I kept the rest. Neither of us was able to raise the fish to anywhere near adulthood.

I've tried keeping farlowella in an established 150g. They never made it for long. @Wills told me that they probably need some sort of bacteria growth that is easily found in the wild, but that might or might not exist in a tank. I'm currently keeping whiptail catfish (sturisoma sp) and they are doing very well. They look very similar but have a reputation (well-earned IMO) for being less finicky than farlowella sp.

Farlos are strange fish. They are not agressive at all and do not seem to like moving around much. So they do not compete for anything with the other inhabitants of a tank. I got them because they eat algae and look pretyy neat. I never expected them to spawn and had no clue how to deal with that phase of things. I did put them into my most sophisticated planted tank.

So is there a distinct difference farlowella‘s and pleco’s? This one looks more like a farowella than a pleco, but is listed as a pleco

Darned picture won’t copy, but it’s listed as a L-10A red lizard pleco

The photos in the above post are not Farlowella, they are a Rineloricara sp. I'll come back to this "red lizard." The Farlowella are the smaller of the two genera, and include the lovely photos from TwoTankAmin above. The much larger "royal" Farlowella are in another genus.

The identification of this species is not a certainty. Of the 27 described species of Farlowella found throughout South America, only two are regularly exported. Most of the existing literature refers to these as F. acus and F. gracilis, but several authorities believe this is incorrect, and consider the fish offered as F. acus to in fact be the subject species. The sketch of F. acus [here F. vittata] and F. gracilis by Sterba shows the differences between the two commonly-available species. Both are identical in their requirements in the aquarium.

Farlowella differ from the other Loricaria fish in the positioning of the dorsal fin which is opposite the anal fin on Farlowella rather than anterior to it. Males have a broader rostrum (snout) and develop rows of bristle-like odontotes along it as they mature. Not difficult to spawn in very soft, acidic water and very dim lighting. The male guards the eggs; after hatching, the fry are difficult to raise since they require very soft vegetable matter. The writer (Byron) has had success using dried oak leaves which the fry will graze. I acquired three for my 90g tank, and after a year or slightly longer, it became evident there was a male and two females. The male will spawn with both females, and did a couple time simultaneously. He is very good at defending the young, but once they hatch they are on their own. I moved a few out of the 90g into the 10g with my pygmies, and they grew there.

My tap water is zero GH/KH, ith a very acidic pH, and I suspect this was a prime reason for this fish spawning.

The Red Lizard: It is a Loricarid, closely related to the species in Rineloricaria. The precise origin of this fish is a mystery. It may possibly be a natural species, but most sources believe it is a man-made hybrid from one or more other Rineloricaria species, but which exactly is also unknown. The German aquarium resource publisher Aqualog introduced this species with the number L010a, but it bears no resemblance to L010. The "L" system was initiated by the German aquarium magazine DATZ [Die Aquarien und Terrarienzeitschrift] to identify the newly-discovered loricarid species prior to the scientific description and naming; these numbers are applied to all known species including those already or once named, so they are unique to each species.

The "pure" strain of this species is now very difficult to obtain, probably only from Germany. It is more likely that fish available in stores will be hybrids. It was found that the original species, sometimes referred to as Leliella sp. "Red," would readily spawn with Rineloricaria lanceolata. Since the latter species is more prolific and easier to spawn, and this hybridization produces very red-coloured fish, commercial breeders preferred the hybrids. The pure species is preserved by some breeders in Germany.

The genus Rineloricaria was erected by Pieter Bleeker in 1862; the name is derived from the Greek rhinos [= nose] and lorica [= cuirass (which is a type of armour breastplate) of leather]. There are presently about 60 described species distributed from Panama down to northern Argentina, and on both sides of the Andes. This is the largest number of species in any Loricariinae genus. In 2008 alone, some 14 new species were described as Rineloricaria.

During the past ten years this genus has undergone classification changes which are still not fully resolved. Isbrucker et al.(2001) re-established the genus Hemiloricaria [Bleeker, 1862] as distinct, along with two new genera (Leliella and Fonchiiichthys), and on the basis of sexual dimorphism moved several species from Rineloricaria into these three. The latest classification, that of Rodriguez & Reis (2008), partly accepts Isbrucker et al. (2001) phenetic proposition of splitting Rineloricaria and Hemiloricaria; but they propose that Hemiloricaria should comprise a widely-distributed group of species (Amazon and non-Amazon species) whereas Rineloricaria would be restricted to species occurring in the Rio Parana and its tributaries, and the coastal drainages from Uruguay to northeastern Brazil. As of the time of writing, this has not been universally accepted.