Green Tiger tails

[andyroo]

Should green tigers (Syncrossus hymenophysa) have orange tails?
Not a bright orange, but a definite sheen. Stripes have a lot of orange in 'em as well when compared to the posted photos.
A

[piggy4]

Hi Andy, I wonder if they are something different ? I once had a syncrossus that didn't fit any of the known ones they never really grew much but had attitude to compensate now were they differed was in the striping the front stripes slanted backwards aka Helodes , but there were no spots on the chest[belly] area aka Hymenophysa , the dorsal had a bit of red on it , never seen since

[wasserscheu]

My 2 have good red in their dorsal and caudal. It can even be flashy red, or occasionaly hardly visible. In general it's a kind of orange tone, clearly visible.

Here some older pic's











today I took a pic of them, noticing it looks pretty sharp, when their barbel is aligned with the line from their eye, that line appears extended from the barbel, and gives their head a kind of arrow image.

But they do nip on the fins of others, and I guess that some scars on clowns are due to them, as there were not any before their time. I knew before hand that this fits their reputation, but had to try them - still find them fascinating. I'm not sure yet what I do with them, they are in a better shape now, then on the pics above, would really like to keep them, looks like a grrr tank sooner or later...

[piggy4]

Hi Wasserscheu, beautifully conditioned Hymenophysa

[andyroo]

Wow!...
Yours guys are doing better in the orange them mine.
You feeding a high-caratin diet (prawns, grasshoppers, centipedes etc...?)
A

[wasserscheu]

I am not aware of feeding anything spezial, try to keep a balance of variuos frozen and commerzial-dry food. Thawed and hot rinsed (blanched) they get salad shrimps and pollak (coalfish) thawed and cold rinsed bloodworms and occasionally white ones or black (white ones don't sink, black ones are too small) or mussels. I have some snails, that never grow up, so I assume the loches eat them, however during quarantine, unlike most other loaches I have, I did not notice the Syncr. eating any snails. Dried food I use, as I do not want to underestimate the possible value of the added vitamins etc. in there. Plus in nature they may eat insects, similar stuff may be in krill, so I buy food that contains 20% krill (JBL), also some (expensive) pellets from Dupla I feed. From Organix (Soelln?) I use the shrimp sticks and the food with kelp in it. From Sera I use the one with some vegies in but a generic mix mostly, I once every 2 weeks feed granulate from a trout farm. Further, they get pure plant flakes from JBL (which only Garras eat but not very excited about) and aslo pleco chips from Tetra, which I break/cut into small crumbs, they love that, it contains wood. I look for stomach filling without fattening them too much, which is also the reason for frozen food, it contains lots of water, thus they faten less, maybe. Live food, the get "fruit-" and "nut-worms", I occasionaly find hazelnut and almond in the shoping-mal, with worms in it (notizable by the web and little crumbs, inside the clear package). I may have forgot some, (like melons, they ignore veggies). Their daily food does not repeat in one week, most weekends there is no feeding, but there may be fry and eggs released from shrimp and fish. The tanks are rather on the cold end of the temperature scale, That's all I can think of. With the group of 5 I originally bought, the smallest one was much more colourful intens wise. Unfourtunately I lost them with the two largest ones during quarantine.

I took some more pics of them on saturday and today

[wasserscheu]

Only found pics of the dead colourful one, no live ones. But it shows the colour difference of that speciman.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o143 ... 1542-F.jpg

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o143 ... 1546-F.jpg

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o143 ... 1545-F.jpg

[andyroo]

Wow- certainly shows what the options are. When I first got these little guys I thought they'd be a curiosity without adding much to the tank's colour/aesthetics, but man, these photos (quite literally) paint another picture.
Admin-folk, please use some of these pics to update the species profile.

I'll get my fellas back onto prawns n' crustaceans later this month, and see what happens.
A

[wasserscheu]

I don't think food made that much difference in the case of the above linked pics. I watched them for 1/2 a year at the lfs before buying them, (I was worried about their aggression but they were kept with small fish and they were fine, but in my tank, as said they nip fins). They were kept as a group in the same tank, I am sure they all ate the same during that time, but the small one simply looked very different. . Unless the little one was not getting to the food and lived on snails only, rather unlikely though, to have that many snails in a lfs tank, once the get eaten the snails get extinct pretty fast, I guess.