Venomous fish sold to me as Kuhli loach? ID help

[PotatoSalad]

Hi! I got an account to ask for help identifying one of the fish I have which I strongly suspect is not a Kuhli loach and to me most closely resembles a wild caught, venomous Madtom Catfish.

I got her about a year ago, before I knew much about Kuhli loaches. She was the only bottom feeder in her tank at Petsmart, and was labeled as a Kuhli loach. I decided to buy her and come back when they restocked to get her some friends, since loaches are pretty social. I did eventually get some more loaches, which is when I started to realize she doesn’t act or look anything like a regular loach. She’s extremely averse to light, to the point where she lives inside a hollow ornament in the tank and I only see her about once a month, usually in the middle of the night when the room is entirely dark. She gets clearly very stressed (gasping for breath, swimming rapidly from corner to corner trying to hide) if you force her out of her hiding spot, for transportation or cleaning, and once before when she was confined to a Tupperware with a couple Serpae tetra while I moved tanks, she panicked and when I came back she’d killed every one of the tetra but one, which lived for a couple more days and then died. After a full year of searching, I finally stumbled across something called a Piebald Madtom Catfish which is the closest thing to her I’ve seen so far, but I’d love some other opinions.

If she is a Madtom, does anyone know anything about their care/lifespan? Should I be worried about having an anxious fish in my tank who is venomous and has a history of killing tankmates? Is it even legal to own her, since some madtoms are endangered or extinct?

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

It's not a dangerous/ venomous fish. It's just a bumblebee catfish. They are nocturnal and normally live in groups. They grow to about 5-6 inches and eat anything that fits in their mouth.