Raphael catfish

FishForums.net Pet of the Month
🐶 POTM Poll is Open! 🦎 Click here to Vote! 🐰

kbowns

New Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2011
Messages
18
Reaction score
3
Location
pontypridd south wales
Hi ,new to posting but I've been keeping fish for nearly 30 years but just want to know has anyone kept Raphael catfish with bristlenose plecs.
I have 2 quite large Raphael catfish that really spend most of their time hiding away in their hiding holes, but I would like to add some bristlenose plecs to the tank but I will only add them if I know they will be ok .
They are currently in a 250g tank
 
Yes. I have 4 Raphael cats(17-7 years) with two Bristlenose plecs(3 years). They use a lot of the same spaces but never have any problems other than the cats trying to eat veggie wafers from under the plecs.
 
Hi ,new to posting but I've been keeping fish for nearly 30 years but just want to know has anyone kept Raphael catfish with bristlenose plecs.
I have 2 quite large Raphael catfish that really spend most of their time hiding away in their hiding holes, but I would like to add some bristlenose plecs to the tank but I will only add them if I know they will be ok .
They are currently in a 250g tank
Sorry I meant a 250 litre
 
Yes. I have 4 Raphael cats(17-7 years) with two Bristlenose plecs(3 years). They use a lot of the same spaces but never have any problems other than the cats trying to eat veggie wafers from under the plecs.
Thanks ,ive been thinking of get some for a while just never got round to it .
 
Have your raphaels ever eaten any of the tank mates? I have one and am worried about it eating the smaller tankmates in there.
 
I have two raphaels and one female bristlenose in a 240L. 99.9% of the time, they ignore one another. They only get into arguments when I put algae wafers in the tank.

Someone on PlanetCatfish recently posted photos of a spotted raphael (Agamyxis pectinfrons), which had gotten injured after an altercation with a male bristlenose over a cave. The raph came off much worse than the pleco. I intentionally bought a female pleco because I had come across other accounts of male bristlenoses having problems with Doradids. Raphs don't really care about territory and go into whatever cave they want. Male plecos care deeply about territory and protecting *their* cave. This is not ideal.

As for eating small fish, yeah, mine have probably eaten a few. Small corys seem to be a delicacy (now only buy large ones). I'm not crazy enough to put C. pygmaeus or C. habrosus in there, but I thought a species that was about 1.5 inches long would be too big for them. I'm not 100% sure that the raphaels were responsible for most of those disappearing, but I'm suspicious.
 
I have two raphaels and one female bristlenose in a 240L. 99.9% of the time, they ignore one another. They only get into arguments when I put algae wafers in the tank.

Someone on PlanetCatfish recently posted photos of a spotted raphael (Agamyxis pectinfrons), which had gotten injured after an altercation with a male bristlenose over a cave. The raph came off much worse than the pleco. I intentionally bought a female pleco because I had come across other accounts of male bristlenoses having problems with Doradids. Raphs don't really care about territory and go into whatever cave they want. Male plecos care deeply about territory and protecting *their* cave. This is not ideal.

As for eating small fish, yeah, mine have probably eaten a few. Small corys seem to be a delicacy (now only buy large ones). I'm not crazy enough to put C. pygmaeus or C. habrosus in there, but I thought a species that was about 1.5 inches long would be too big for them. I'm not 100% sure that the raphaels were responsible for most of those disappearing, but I'm suspicious.
I'm starting to wonder if my raphael is even a raphael at all. I went to my LFS today and they had a catfish exactly the same as the one I have now. The one in the LFS gets to 25cm and I'm confused what one it is.

Mine sits in a log all day. He came out last night around 9:30 for a very brief period and went back to his log. It is hard to get a picture but I will try again tonight and will post it on the forum.

I have Corydoras panda but they are nearly full grown around 4cm and the catfish is around 6-7cm or 2.5 inches.
 
My two raphaels are about 6" long. As far as I know, they are both Platydoras armatulus.
 
Here are mine. Couldn't quite get the two in the same frame!

IMG_0106.JPG
IMG_0102 2.JPG
IMG_0103.JPG
IMG_0105.JPG
 
How do you get yours to come out? Mine sits in a log all day and only comes out for 2 minutes or so. Is this the same as yours?

Mine came out around 9:50 last night and my mum got a video in which she is going to screenshot a decent picture of it. I’ll post on this thread soon.
 
So this is my catfish. It was so hard to get a decent picture of him. He has the same barbells as yours as well. Sorry for blurry image lol. For some reason couldn't get my better photo to upload so went with this one.
IMG_20210101_213527.jpg
 
Yours is a spotted raphael, Agamyxis pectinifrons. Mine are striped raphaels, Platydoras armatulus. Yours should never grow beyond 5". Mine could stay around 6", but some Platydoras can reach 8 or 9 (which would not be ideal, so I hope they don't). They're all Doradid catfishes, which is a large family, but those are the ones most commonly seen in the aquarium trade.

The first raphael I got trained herself to come out at feeding time. Couldn't tell you why, other than that they are smart, opportunistic feeders, and OH and I aren't that scary. When I got the second about one a year later, she started off being very shy and hid a lot, but within a week, learned to show her face at feeding time as well, or she wasn't getting anything. When you read about them on forums, it's apparent that lots of people never see theirs and that's normal. Mine are bold. You're meant to feed them after tank lights go out, but I stopped doing that because they were getting far too fat -- they were effectively getting two feeds per day. Now I keep them on a diet by making them compete with the corys.

If yours isn't brazenly swimming out of its cave when you feed the other fish, make sure you give it some sinking catfish pellets (or even better, live worms) at night. They are very active at night and will prowl up and down the tank, probably stressing the hell out of fish who are traumatized by their predatory behaviour. If you sneak into the room at night, maybe with a headtorch on its red light setting, you'll hopefully see it.
 
Last edited:
Yours is a spotted raphael, Agamyxis pectinifrons. Mine are striped raphaels, Platydoras armatulus. Yours should never grow beyond 5". Mine could stay around 6", but some Platydoras can reach 8 or 9 (which would not be ideal, so I hope they don't). They're all Doradid catfishes, which is a large family, but those are the ones most commonly seen in the aquarium trade.

The first raphael I got trained herself to come out at feeding time. Couldn't tell you why, other than that they are smart, opportunistic feeders, and OH and I aren't that scary. When I got the second about one a year later, she started off being very shy and hid a lot, but within a week, learned to show her face at feeding time as well, or she wasn't getting anything. When you read about them on forums, it's apparent that lots of people never see theirs and that's normal. Mine are bold. You're meant to feed them after tank lights go out, but I stopped doing that because they were getting far too fat -- they were effectively getting two feeds per day. Now I keep them on a diet by making them compete with the corys.

If yours isn't brazenly swimming out of its cave when you feed the other fish, make sure you give it some sinking catfish pellets (or even better, live worms) at night. They are very active at night and will prowl up and down the tank, probably stressing the hell out of fish who are traumatized by their predatory behaviour. If you sneak into the room at night, maybe with a headtorch on its red light setting, you'll hopefully see it.
I saw mine come out with the lights on as it went for a cory wafer. I think Midnight (the raphael cat) ate it and a few minutes later he went back into the log. I have seen Midnight around 4am because I woke up early and decided to see if he was around. Lo and behold he was there sifting through the sand picking up the leftovers the corys had missed.

My log is in the right hand corner of the tank so should I try and put a bloodworm cube in there and see if he will eat it? Or should I try and dig up some worms and feed them to Midnight?
 

Most reactions

trending

Staff online

Back
Top