Your views on keeping Synodontis multipunctatus with mouthbrooders.

Looking at keeping Synodontis multipunctatus in with my mbuna and im curious on anyone views or experince with this..

I know that they will eat and replace the eggs of the mouthbrooder with their own... Do they always do this whenever there is a spawn..? Is that the only way to get a spawn from Synodontis multipunctatus?

I know they will always try, but I've heard that some species are better than others at avoiding their "attack" (I don't know the specifics though). If you aren't specifically trying to breed then I think it would be sort of cool to see it and try to grow out some of the cats as well.

That is the only way you can get offspring of these cats. They dont spawn as often as your mouthbrooders. I have 3 of them right now right around 3" with my Zebra Obliquidens. I orginally had them with my tropheus where I seen the idea. Fr0nts that you rarely ever see on here has 3 adults with his trophs with 1 female pregnant. I havent talked to him in about a month so I dont know if she has done the deed yet. Im thinking of getting some more from bobby to add to my mix hap peacock tank. You do need bigger mouthbrooders, some of the mbuna's are to small, like Demasoni's etc. There my favorite african catfish so far, they are very active come to the top to feed and chase each other around. More active than my featherfin catfish and upside down catfish.

I would get a different cichlid if i wanted to raise the cat eggs.. Ive seen them say certain cichlids are better for raising them and holding them than others..

What syno looks the best.. are there different varieties with different finnige

The reason why there as expensive as they are is because of the parasite breeding method, so most people figure there taking the place of what that mother would normally be holding for cost.

The multi is a known cat that is a parasite, the petricola isnt documented as a fact for being the same way. There is another african cat thats a parasite but so far I havent seen any documented facts which one it is. I think there is a dwarf version of the petricola, which is really close looking as the multi.

Is there any other cats from the other african lakes... I like a bottom dweller but dont want just corys or anything like that.. But i dont want a catfish that gets huge and dwarfs my mbuna.. lol

The showcase is on the mbuna not a couple cats.. lol

Most of them only get 6 to 9" which is perfect. My adult featherfin is the boss of my front tank, mainly because I put him in the tank a week before the rest of the fish. Some cats only do well being single unless you have a big tank. I know the multi's prefer to be in a school than single.

what is this fetherfin?

here is a link and pic. This isnt a pic of mine either.

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Petricola are what I have - the dwarf size - I actually have them in my fry tank at the moment to grow them out a tad more. They're only about 2" or so right now. They'll end up in my Tang tank. I picked them up at APFP and intentionally went for the smaller ones in the tank.

Addicted - featherfins are beautiful! Have you posted pictures of yours yet? I'd love to see them.

We cross-posted.

Addictedtofish wrote:here is a link and pic. This isnt a pic of mine either.

Lol.. thanks which do you prefer them or the multis?? I love the look of this guy

I don't believe you can keep featherfins with mbuna, Doza. They're a Tang lake fish but more importantly, I think mbuna would go after their fins like mad.

I dont have a good camera yet, I recently bought a new Android 2 smartphone with 5 mp camera, and it sucks. When I get off my lazy butt and become rich I will get a good camera and I promise I will take some good pics of all my tanks. My featherfin is 6 to 7" I got him when he was 3.5" and he grew very fast. But I have 2 other ones at 2" that are growing slow that I got from big fish aquatics a few months ago.

i thought all the african lake fish really could co exist being the extremely close water parameters.

Nice. I'm jealous!

The water conditions wouldn't be the problem, the level of aggression would be.

Actually featherfins are a nile river fish, but the PH is close enough for them to work in african rift lake setups. I know there is no documented info on them breeding in captivity. So I keep them for cleanup and decoration.

i thought the nile was a low ph water system?

you can always hope right... well i gotta go but keep the info coming... im keeping the gf up.. Cant have that.. lol ...
Later

Featherfins are actually quite aggressive when there bigger, I have 1 Brichardi and 2 leleupi in my front tank with that cat and everyone but the brichardi runs from him.

Addictedtofish wrote:Actually featherfins are a nile river fish.

Uhh... yeah... what he said! LOL

I've seen them in rift lake tanks so often I actually assumed they were native to the lakes. Thanks for the correction Addicted.

that link I gave you says up to 7.8 but alot of your fish are captive bred anymore so it really dont matter as long as you acclimate them well. Im wanting to breed the multi's and maybe one day Ill get a different tang type that is a parasite type.

My brother has one my size in Wenatchee in 7.2 water and he grew it up from 2", his is like 4 yrs old. has lived his whole life in a 37 gal tank. He has it with goldfish and a dojo loach.

Heres another link I found with a few different syndo's.

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Here is a syndo I would like to get someday.

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I actually just traded a buddy for a 6 pack of F0's to add to all my Geo's.. Not sure if they'll breed with non African mouth brooders or not though.. I might have to grab a breeding trio of Haps to try and breed them if it doesn't work with my Geo's.

I keep Synodontis Eupterus with my mbuna and other Malawis, in three different tanks with no problems. Also S. notatus and a Syno hybrid that was sold as a longirostris.

Click on the photos to see full size.


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I'd like to try the multipunctatus one day because of the parasitic mouthbrooding. I've also been looking for petricola, but everything that I've seen for sale as petricola look like they are actually lucipinnis.

I keep the Sydontis Featherfin in my 75 with my Mbunas. I have 2 and they seem quite aggfressive with each other but not so much with the other fish. They were around 2" when I got them and they are now at least as big as my largest Mbunas. I fed them at night when I first got them and I didnt see them much. So now I feed them at the same time as the others and they stay out much more now. I will try to get some pictures of them. the ones I have are pretty poor. Just my 2 cents.

I've always enjoyed the the sydontis over most bottom dwellers, they don't get bigger than 5-6 inches. the multies will not breed with all africans, they will try but there are only a few species that will allow the multies to parasite. I've used malawai peacocks, but they eventually stop breeding.
the Blue dolphin moorri will host and I can't recall the other species that will.

You'll be the first to get a Multi spawn with Geos.

You have more chance to breeding Petricolas then getting the multipuntatus to find a host.
Both Petricolas and multipunctatus look very similar and petricolas breed on their own.

thanks for all the info and everything guys...

I had wild synodontis mutipuntatus and have breed these with my mbunas and peacocks, I would say I got like 50 fry in over a yr, I strip them out of the females, the baby cats were already feeding on the other fry. These cats do grow fast. I get like 1-3 fry each time I strip a female.

Breeding them with fronts do not work. Neither will tropheus. The size of the cats eggs are smaller than the mbuna eggs, and much smaller than frontosa eggs (front eggs are as large as popcorn kernals).


I also did breed synodotis petricolas, I believe I had batched of eggs in a container filled with marbles, 3 times, I placed them in another tank and lasted about 3-4 days, did see the wigglers, but somehow on the 4th day, it dissolved. These cats takes forever to grow, could take like 2 yrs to reach adult sizes. I gave up on these kind.

I have not heard any other success on other kind of synos.