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Pellegrini Eartheater swarmed by Orinocodoras Catfish

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Sam
Post subject: Pellegrini Eartheater swarmed by Orinocodoras Catfish
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:32 pm
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Posts: 535
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:52 pm
Location: Mass
 
Last night I fed my 8-inch Geophagus pellegrini a load of four frozen mosquito larvae cubes. In his usual fashion, he took all four cubes into his enormous mouth and started working on them (I'm always a bit worried he might get a brain freeze!).

As I watched him eat, all five of my new Orinocodoras eigenmanni catfish, an unusual doradid cat from South America, came out and started whizzing around the tank in excitement - they could clearly smell that food was present. One after another the catfish found the giant pellegrini and began swimming all over the outside of his mouth and gills. As the pellegrini rose upwards in the tank, chewing on his frozen cubes, the catfish rose with him. It was quite a spectacle, the large, red, duck-faced Geophagus, hovering high in the water column, and swarming with excited black and white catfish. It reminded me of sharks or manta rays with their companion remora and other fish.

I watched the scene closely to make sure my pellegrini was not being harmed in any way - but the catfish were only interested in the bits of mosquito larvae ejected from his gills as he chewed - and the big guy barely seemed to realize the catfish were there.

I wonder how common scenes like this are in the depths of tropical rivers - especially surrounding fish like the eartheaters that must stir up a lot of potential food as they sift through substrate - and surrounding larger predator fish which must create many smaller food particles as they capture and manipulate their prey.

Pretty cool.


BTW -
The Orino Cats are wonderful doradids - much much more active than the similar raph cats - and we have a bunch of young ones at the store. We can't order this fish - they only come as by-catch... so get em while you can.

Also, I am breeding the Geophagus pellegrini (Yes, the REAL pellegrini) and hopefully we will have young to offer in the next few months.


Cheers,
- Sam


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