Coldwater Catfish

[colen]

Hello,

I am wondering if there are any catfish that are coldwater?

If so, what type are they?

Thanks!

 

[Teelie]

There are a lot but none that are safe for an aquarium under 200 gallons that I know of.

 

[colen]

Hmm. Thats to bad.

If anyone does happen to know of a coldwater catfish that could be put into a 42 gallon tank then please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Teelie]

There probably are some. Not all of them can be larger fish, I just can't think of any. You could try http/planetcatfish.com in the meantime.

 

[SirMinion]

Although there are no small coldwater cats (that I'm aware of), thanks to convergant evolution, there are several coldwater loaches that look distictly catfishy and have catfish-like habits.

The obvious ones that come to mind are the Weather Loach (behaves a lot like and looks slighlty like hoplo cat fish) and the Hillstream Loach (although it's not a true loach, but looks and behaves somewhat like a pleco)

 

[colen]

Teelie, thank you for the link.

SirMinion:

My LFS keeps both hillstream loaches and weather loaches in heated tanks. I have been considering getting some hullstream loaches for sometime now, but I worry that they wont survive due to the big change in temp. I supose I could try and slowly get them use to the cooler temp over a period of a day or so? Like in a bucket?

What would be the best way to go about that one?

Thanks for the help everyone, appreciate it.

 

[SirMinion]

How big is the temperature difference? if it's only a couple of degrees then the usual floating of the fish back for 40 minutes will be fine.

Indoor coldwater tanks are usually not coldwater at all but are around room temperature so in a heated house, or in summer the 'coldwater' tanks are near enough tropical anyway.

 

[CFC]

How small do they need to be? The American Brown Bullhead catfish doesnt grow very large and would be fine for a coldwater community with larger fish, say none under 4 inches.

 

[colen]

CFC - it can't get very big at all. Would it fit into a 55 gal?

 

[bunjiweb]

If you plan to have good water flow in the tank then there are lots of asian hillstream catfish and pimelodus that will happily go in an indoor coldwater tank...Because although they come from hot places, they reside in areas of fast flowing water which is much cooler than the surrounding air because it is well oxygenated and moving faster so has less time to conduct heat from the air.

Ben