Synodontis contractus- a single baby

[Phoenixfishroom]

Ok so I was cleaning my tank the other day and found 1 s.contractus baby. I would say it is probably just about a month old, just starting to swim upside down and about the size of a corydora habrosus, which share a tank with my synos. I am pretty happy about this occurrence but this means that I need to move the contractus out of that tank. They live in a mixed school with s.nigriventris and while I don’t think this is a hybrid I don’t want hybrids in the future. Also, obviously someone at the other eggs/fry and I dont think they eat their own young.

so now I am setting up a new tank and looking for more contractus. They are used to living in a school of 10, but there are only 4 of them. I did happen to look while there were zebra variant nigriventris available and just ordered 6 of them so that school will still be full size… contractus are hard to come by though. Hopefully they will just increase their own numbers a bit more in the near future. I plan to use the wet/dry season method on their new tank to stimulate spawning.

I will say I was overdue for a water change on that tank, I have heard that you need to let the tank get a little dirty, there ,at be something to that.

[Colu]

Are you sure it's not a Cory's fry from your habrosus as synodontis rarely breed in aquariums @Phoenixfishroom

[Phoenixfishroom]

If you have habros that swim upside down that is some shit I need to see  🤣🤣

seriously though, how dumb would I have to be to look at a syno the same size as an adult habro and not be able to tell them apart…. Even if it wasn’t swimming upsidedown?? I have been breeding habros for years, I breed many species of catfish. I also breed khuli loaches and hillstream loaches. I plan to breed mormyrids and ropefish and have no doubt that I will be successful, using the same method I use on the syno tank for that matter.

….honestly I am a little insulted that you actually think it is more likely I can’t tell the difference between a syno and a cory (really???) then that I just know what I am doing. Had you asked a more reasonable question I could have gladly told you that while they don’t commonly breed in captivity they also aren’t commonly kept in schools of 16 (10 at the time) in a tank where the seasons get replicated getting fed live and frozen food 4-5 times a week. And then it probably would have seemed quite reasonable to think that they are just well conditioned, happy and healthy, and had the right trigger provided to them.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Phoenixfishroom

[Phoenixfishroom]

And as a side note the statement synos rarely breed in captivity is actually pretty outdated information. Rift lake synos (multipunctatus, Petricola, and lucapinnis) are quite commonly bred in captivity these days, as are decorus. People have been breeding nigriventris more commonly as well. There have even been successful spawns of angelicus, euphrites, and shoutendeni at this point.