Hello colleagues! We continue to get acquainted with aquarium inhabitants and today on the agenda we have Agomix catfish, which is also known as white-spotted, or star-shaped agamix. We all used to observe live-grouper, haracin or carp aquariums, but real catfish are rarely found in amateur aquariums.
Only not the river catfish, which fishermen catch on spinning rods, but tropical ones.
Star agamix is also called a singing catfish. Of course, this is not our usual singing, but they are capable of making a loud crackling with the help of bone pectoral fins. In addition, they have in the arsenal of another musical instrument – the swimming bubble.
With it, the soma resonate, relaxing and straining the muscles of the vertebrae and the back. Surprisingly, this rattle can be heard for 30 meters.
Agamixes use this technique in two cases: to attract a female and scare away enemies, oh how many there are in the Amazon jungle.
Agamix stellate (white spotted) lives in the Amazon River. A hydrobiont is a predator whose main dish is snails, mollusks, which it eats with terrible force. The fish belongs to the family of Brony catfish and can also be found in the famous Orinoco River, as well as in reservoirs in Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.
As you already guessed from the diet, catfish is a bottom predator, preferring warm and clean running water. However, there have been cases when these soms were found in small wetland reservoirs.
If there is a lack of oxygen in the reservoir, then agamix can sometimes float to the surface to fill the intestines with air.
This predator is nocturnal, and daytime is trying to find shelter among the stones, drifts and folds of the bottom relief. Locals have repeatedly seen catfish crawling in whole groups from the reservoir to the reservoir, moving with the help of bone fins.
The body of the catfish is massive and slightly flattened from above. Cover the whole body of the fish with bony plates that are missing only on the tail fin.
Under natural conditions, the maximum body length of a fish is 15 to 18 centimeters, but under aquarium conditions, the size of the fish is a bit more modest and rarely exceeds the 10 centimeter mark. Fins catfish is used as a weapon in the defense against predators.
Agree, I don’t really want to attack a potential victim when she has very prickly fins.
Body color is black with lots of large yellow spots. Towards the end of the tail spots will merge into yellow stripes. The color of spots in young individuals is white.
Thanks to this color, the fish got the name white-spotted or star-shaped. Life expectancy in aquarium conditions is up to 17 years, but this is subject to good conditions.
As with any other fish, the main emphasis should be placed on good conditions of detention, which will be similar to natural ones. To keep the catfish you need an aquarium with a volume of 100 liters and a water temperature of 25 degrees. About the subtleties of the content, then there is no specific knowledge required, as well as bright lighting.
On the contrary, the fish prefers muted light, as in natural conditions.
The water hardness in the aquarium should be about 8 degrees, and the active response of the environment is closer to neutral (6 – 8 pH). But water changes need to be done quite often, in contrast to the content of other fish.
You will have a couple of times a week to replace about 10% of the total.
Aquarium substrate is preferable to either small gravel or sand. In view of the fact that almost all catfish love to rummage in the ground, and agamix is no exception, it is better to fill the soil in a tank with a thick layer. When you design an aquarium, do not forget to arrange shelters for your pets in the form of grottoes and caves, where fish will hide during the daytime.
Oh, and do not forget to put kryag, as they are also an excellent shelter. Aquarium plants should also be in large quantities, because the aquatic species lives in water bodies rich in aquatic vegetation.
For the purification of aquarium water it is preferable to use false (I wrote about this in this material), this will provide powerful mechanical filtration. Why so difficult?
The fact is that agamixes form a huge amount of waste products. When transferring fish to another aquarium, it is better not to use the usual net net, as the catfish may get entangled in it with its bony fins.
As I mentioned earlier, the White-Spotted Agamix is a predator that can recycle all the snails and other mollusks that are in your tank. But shellfish is not limited to its diet. He also uses pipemaker, bloodworm and various worms with great pleasure.
It is also possible to diversify the diet of high-protein commercial feed and shrimp meat. Since the fish is a bottom dweller, food is needed so that it sinks to the bottom of the aquarium, and does not float in the water column or on the surface.
Neighbors for agamiksa need to pick the same size and not predators. Som can get along with various non-aggressive fish without problems, the main thing is that they do not touch it.
But the trifle in the form of neons and other small fish, agamix can gladly eat.
Hydrobiont puberty occurs at the age of two years. However, you can hardly find more or less comprehensive information on the breeding of these fish, since they are bred by a fairly narrow circle of professionals who encourage fish to spawn with the help of special hormonal injections.
For spawning, a couple of fish are taken to an aquarium where there is no soil, and in the center of the aqua in the pot they plant the Bolbitis Gedeloti bush or some other fern. Spawning occurs on the leaves of the plant.
The maximum number of eggs that the female is able to postpone does not exceed hundreds. The incubation period of caviar is 2 days.
When the fry begin to swim in the aquarium, they can already enter into the diet tubule and artemia.
Unfortunately, the white-spotted agamix did not receive wide popularity among domestic aquarists. The fish is easy to maintain, no problem for aquarists, and the original color adorns any aquarium.
I think that if this hydrobiont were imported more often to pet shops or to poultry houses, then aquarists would more often buy it for their works of art.
