Synodontis Petricola Help Please

[bullheaduk]

i saw this catfish in a local shop and it was listed as synodontis petricola. It was a dark brown colour with white trim all around its fins and body. They were £10 each and were beautiful. I have tried to find them on the web, but the ones i have found all have spots on them and theese in the lfs had none. Was it named correctly?
It was said to be originaly from lake tanganyika in africa, but these were farm bred. I also read that they like a ph of 8-9 & mine is 7.2 Would you think ok or not. Sorry i don't have a picture to show, but hopefully someone will know what i mean. Thanks for any help or advice.

 

[bullheaduk]

Any ideas?

 

[Jpmc™]

I have no idea, if you can take care of plecos and catfish, buy it, get us a picture, and we can tell you.

 

[dave_oddballs]

petricola do have a white outline to their fins, but they do also have spots, and are generally a white background color with dark spots, but under stress they can go an almost solid dark brown color, realistically it is difficult to identify any of the synodontis species without a decent picture.
most synodontis do get to a decent size and will take small fish, like neons etc. they need hiding spaces like a cave or under bogwood. can be territorial towards other bottom dwellers, if you have a tank of at least around 125 litres, and no small or bottom dwelling fish you should be fine.
as mentioned dont expect an identification without a picture!

David

 

[marksp]

petricola do have a white outline to their fins, but they do also have spots, and are generally a white background color with dark spots, but under stress they can go an almost solid dark brown color, realistically it is difficult to identify any of the synodontis species without a decent picture.
most synodontis do get to a decent size and will take small fish, like neons etc. they need hiding spaces like a cave or under bogwood. can be territorial towards other bottom dwellers, if you have a tank of at least around 125 litres, and no small or bottom dwelling fish you should be fine.
as mentioned dont expect an identification without a picture!

David

I have 4 Petricola living with 40 Tropheus and a multitude of troph fry. As yet I haven't seen any fry taken even though they are sharing the same rock crevices. I had 9 fry in the tank for 2 months and they certainly took none now there are scores of them it is harder to tell but as far as I cn tell they don't bother each other. Might be different if I stopped feeding them I guess

 

[dave_oddballs]

yeah i meen its just a general rule not to keep small fish with bigger cats and syno's do have a reputation for taking small fish like neons etc, as in all fish it generally depends on the fish its self, or like you said it may be the fact they always get enough food at feeding time and feel no need to even look for food at any other time. it should still be taken into consideration that syno's will and do take small fish.

dave