Home » Plants & Animals » Tropical Fish » Pimelodus Pictus Catfish - Page 2

Pimelodus Pictus Catfish - Page 2

© Clifford J. Aliperti

The weakest of the four fish was found floating at the top of the tank within a week. Okay, these things happen sometimes. But they didn't really seem to be distracting the Severum and the Oscar from each other except at feeding time. Otherwise they stayed hidden in the caves occasionally making their presence known by swimming a couple of quick sweeping patterns across the bottom of the tank. They were hard to keep track of. Soon enough an odor developed from the tank but no bodies were to be found. I had to do a large water change, which would help with the ammonia level anyway, and then begin excavating my caves. I found much less than half a body recognizable as one of the Pictus only by the polka-dot pattern. This same sequence of events repeated itself with a week with the third fish.

This is when the Oscar was removed and I do believe him to be the culprit because the fourth Pictus cat survives. My only difficulty with him was that when I had a busy week I allowed my weekly water changes to lapse into an every other week change. I guess that going off my regular routine spiked my ammonia levels somewhat and the result of this was the poor Pictus' barbells fell off. Hopefully they come back!

So, as you can see, putting together an acceptable community of fish when you're dealing with the bigger guys can become a real hassle. Turns out, I should have stuck with my first instincts during this entire Pictus affair and avoided them altogether. Then again under the slightest of different circumstances this could have all gone differently. Who knows?

The copyright of the article Pimelodus Pictus Catfish - Page 2 in Tropical Fish is owned by Clifford J. Aliperti. Permission to republish Pimelodus Pictus Catfish - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.