AWESOME Small Catfish for your Nano Tank. Supercharge Your Small Aquarium with Tiny Catfish!

You'll see a lot of fantastic small catfish, striped raphael, spotted raphael, red-tailed catfish. The problem is, these guys grow. They are typically sold two to three inches in the store, that's how we sell our red-tailed catfish, but red-tailed catfish get to two to three feet. Striped raphaels get about six inches, but that will grow, outgrow like little nano-tanks like I have here. What catfish can you add to a small aquarium, whether it's a nano-tank up to a ten-gallon tank? It's going to stay with that tank, you're not going to have to find a new home for it, return it to the pet store for credit, because they give you pennies on the dollar, you can't blame them. I've selected five here. I'm going to start with the largest fish for the small aquariums, and that's going to be the zebra pleco. A real quick note on the zebra pleco. There was, or is, the L46 zebra pleco, which is the pure zebra pleco. From Brazil, it's been restricted now for the aquarium trade, because Brazil is damming up all the rivers there, and these zebra plecos live under fast-running waterfalls, so the waterfalls are disappearing, so the zebra pleco is disappearing. So in order to sell a zebra pleco, you have to show in the United States that it's been tank-raised in another country. The little trick is, fish and wildlife, you should look into this, tank-raised does not mean tank-bred, so there are unscrupulous people shipping baby L46 zebra plecos from Brazil to, I won't say where, but an Asia country, where they grow them up to about half an inch, and then they sell them back to the United States as tank-raised zebra plecos. We don't sell those, we don't mess around with that, but we do have a very beautiful zebra pleco, used to be called the false zebra, but now that we hardly ever see real, true zebra plecos, we just call it the zebra pleco, or Columbia zebra pleco, the L129, not L146 pleco. It only grows to three inches, like the true zebra pleco, it just has more brown in it, doesn't have that deep black with the white stripe, but it's still a really pretty zebra pattern, it's just golden and chocolate instead of black and white. If you are going to catch these guys with your hands, remember, you just hold the outside of the fish very gently, because you don't want to mess around with the slime coating on the fish, that's what prevents a lot of small parasites from getting into those scales and causing disease in the fish, so you don't want to wipe that slime coating, and of course you don't want to bruise the fish at all either. Slime coating is generated by the fish on a constant basis, so you wipe it away, it's going to regenerate in a very short time, we're talking within a day that slime coating's back, but if it's stressed, it may not, because it's body's trying to do all these other survival activities. So if you have a fish that looks like it's been bruised and battered, his slime coating may have been degraded in some way, when you release him, I would put a little bit of salt or a little bit of slime coating medication, and you'll find that in any aquarium store, that helps that slime coating develop on the fish, those ingredients are safe for snails and other organisms that you have in your aquarium, it's not like a medication, so you can add that to your tank, and that'll help him redevelop his slime coating, but anyways I'm talking too much about slime coating and not enough about catfish. This is Columbia Zebra Pleco, he's a beautiful catfish, and believe it or not, this guy is only going to grow another inch, and then he's fully grown, he's a great scavenger, he will eat sinking pellets, you probably should add once in a blue moon, and once in a blue moon means weekly, an algae wafer, Hikari's algae wafer, Sara's algae wafer, they're all good, and also, like all Plecos, they probably should have a little piece of driftwood somewhere in that tank, you can get small pieces of driftwood like this big for nano tanks, and they look great in the aquarium, they're good for the water quality in general, so tannins from the wood as it degrades helps the water quality. From Columbia, Zebra Plecos can also be found in Venezuela, Peru, but they are also very affordable in, at least when we're talking about ornamental Plecos, they're typically less than $50 in the aquarium store, compared to Plecos that can go well over $100, $200, so these are affordable, fancy Pleco, and just for the sake of clarity, the scientific name for the L129 Zebra Pleco is Hypancestrous Debiliterra, and the scientific name for the true Zebra Pleco is Hypancestrous Zebra, just Hypancestrous Zebra. Now I want to go to the other side of the world, to Indonesia, and where we have a really neat little catfish called the stone or anchor, because it's shaped like an anchor, it's called stone because it has a stony face, a stony body, stony texture, I guess you'd call it, actually I don't know why it's called a stone catfish, but anchor catfish, it looks like an anchor catfish, we call it a stone catfish here because it's shorter, it's more common to be called a stone catfish, but it is really a cool catfish, it never gets very big, and it was discovered by this guy named Jordan, Charles Jordan? Anyways, I just want to say one thing about that guy, because he was from an era, he was a friend of Charles Darwin, another doctor, another guy who treated people, went around the world, he went to India, he was known to go right in the middle of plagues in India and help people out, but while he was there he would always go out in the rivers and streams and try and figure out new species, he named it Harajordoni, J-E-R-D-O-N-I, after his last name, they are quick little buggers, but they never get big, and they're great active catfish, so you can put a few of these in a small tank, look how little that guy is, but they have a lot of definition, and what's great about small little nano tanks and small tanks is you can see these little fish in very good detail, this is the Harajordoni or anchor or stone catfish, beautiful little catfish, even more impressive is the guy that discovered this thing, I mean he was a zoologist, he was a botanist, he has plants named after him, and he was a physician, went all over the world, I mean these guys during this mid 1800 period were truly renaissance men, one more thing about Thomas Jordan, not Charles, but Thomas Caber Hill Jordan, is that he is most known for finding all kinds of new species of birds and doing a classification of over a thousand bird species in India, so he's an expert on all things India, you'll find very little about the stone catfish, which I think was his greatest contribution to the world, but for some reason it hasn't made it into Wikipedia yet, so maybe one of you can correct that. Now this is the second smallest pleco available on the trade, the smallest is the true dwarf ranger pleco, which I once in a while can bring in from Peru, the problem with ranger plecos though, is they come in like this small, and the true ranger plecos, not the false dwarf ones, grow to be like this big, they both look the same when they're this size, and they're caught together, so when you go to a pet store and you buy a ranger pleco, be aware it may be a true ranger and grows to two feet instead of two inches. This one always is small, this is the L10A red lizard pleco, it's also called a catfish because plecos are catfish, so sometimes if you go to the store, aquarium store and you see, or you go online and you see L10A red lizard catfish, it is the same fish as the L10A red lizard pleco. The reason it's called red is because in nature it has a kind of a rusty brown color, the truer red comes from breeding, this one's closer to the natural color of the L10A lizard pleco, and it's nearly full grown, it's going to get about maybe half an inch bigger, a little rounder in the body, and a little more red will come out, but that's it, that's the max size, so this can go into even the smallest aquarium, he gets along fine with fry, with shrimp, he's a scavenger, small body, doesn't need a lot of food, and he's visible enough that he's a nice visual accessory to a small aquarium, and you can even spot him in a 10 gallon tank. The Europeans, particularly the Eastern Europeans, have done a great job of breeding this fish into a really deep red color, but the price on that fish is probably four times what you would normally pay. These guys in the pet store, probably $15, but if you get the Eastern European version, it's probably closer to 50 bucks, but there are different extremes of color through the breeders available on this, so it makes it a fun hobby fish, but it's a very hardy fish, and it does, like all plecos, driftwood would be a good idea. Also, a little zucchini, slice a zucchini, or an algae wafer, but don't leave it in there too long, because these guys won't eat a lot of it, and that stuff does, you know, eventually spoil the aquarium if you leave it in there uneaten, like any other food. This is the L10A Red Lizard Pleco, great fish from South America, usually imported from Brazil, and now in the pet trade, I'd say 99 percent plus red in either Asia or Europe for the aquarium trade. Europeans, very red, Asia's still a little brown color. If you have an opportunity to go to the holding areas for wild fish down in South America, they'll have buckets of cories without any oxygen bubbling in there at all, because they can go up and just breathe air from the surface, and then go back down. So in the holding areas, they don't worry about the cories, they're really a neat little hardy species. They're not labyrinth, they don't have that extra lung, but they are able to fill their system, push through their gills from surface air, and most fish can't do that. Now we're going to one we've spoken about before on the show, because we were talking about best at 10, best algae eaters. These guys are all algae eaters and scavengers. The Otocinclus is terrific because he's active during the day. Some of these guys are only active at night. This guy is popular because he's inexpensive and he is very, very active and eats quite a bit and never outgrows the tank. This is his full size right now. You'll be able to purchase these guys about half the size to this size. The larger, probably the better in the store, but sometimes they can't control it. I can't control it because these are all wild caught and you get whatever they catch. But this is a nice good size for an Otocinclus. He is a perfect catfish for nano tanks and small aquariums. And a pack of these is actually good for a mid-sized aquarium as well. And they do, like most small fish, like to run around in a pack. Catfish aren't considered schooling fish, but small catfish tend for their own safety in the wild, roam around in groups, and this is no exception. So when I get these Otocinclus, there's supposedly two types and a one color variant from the wild. Most of the Otocinclus are brought in from Colombia. The most abundant there and it's most affordable to fly into the U.S. There's Otocinclus afinis and Otocinclus otocinclus batatus. Afinis, most common and tends to get a little larger. But when you bring them in, in the bags, I can't tell them apart. But once in a while you get one that's a nice creamy color instead of the grayish with black line color that normally you get with an Otocinclus. The batatus and the afinis look identical. So I don't know how they distinguish the two and they ship them to me, but I pass it along. There's a level of trust in some of the species when you bring them in from the wild. But to tell you the truth, they both cost the same. So there's no real value in whether you bring in batatus or afinis. Yeah, they behave the same. They eat the same. Afinis might grow a little bit bigger. Otherwise, they're the same fish. I can't imagine they cannot interbreed. If they are some distinct differences that you know that I don't, that would be great to hear in the comments section. One thing to look for whenever you're looking for a small fish, remember a lot of these come from the wild. We don't know how they've been handled until they got here. I know when I see these guys, whether they have what's called a concave stomach or not. If that stomach is concave, that fish is worthless. Because what that means is, and this even goes to big fish like discus, if it's come to the point where they've lost their whole fat area and you see a belly that goes in like this on the underside of the fish and it's generally in the whole pack, then don't touch any of them. But just one or two, just avoid those particular ones when you're shopping in the pet store. They've starved. They won't come back. The stomach lining has attached and it's not ever going to survive. So there's a point where a fish can just not live anymore. It's starved itself to the point that it will perish. Look for a nice flat line or full body on any of these small fish. Not just catfish, rasboras, all of them. This guy's fine. There's no issues with him. He has a little tail that at some point must have been nipped because one of the fins on the caudal fin, one part, the lower portion of the upper portion. Yeah, the upper portion is a little longer, but they'll probably even out in a little bit of time, a couple weeks. All right, so I grabbed the last catfish because I didn't want to cross contaminate with my other clean fish here. This is the bumblebee catfish. Bumblebee catfish, he's from the wild. Very, very popular catfish because of the price point, but they're so temperamental. They need clean water. They only come out at night. If you got these guys in a nice clean aquarium and it's the pH is seven or below, you'll have good luck with them. You may never see them because they like to hide during the day, but they'll thrive in your fish tank. But if you don't have those conditions, I don't recommend them. We put them in our tank as typical. We had one tank that didn't get the pH right and I got some fungus on them. So I'm showing them for a couple of reasons. First, pretend he doesn't have fungus on and you can see what they look like. The fungus is just the white fuzz on there. They're pretty little catfish. He is, he's going to grow about another half inch and then he's full grown. Affordable, they're typically only about two to three dollars online or in the pet store. You don't see them very often in pet stores, though, because they are so temperamental. They're not the greatest fish to throw on with a bunch of other fish in the aquarium store environment. Everything here in the wholesale environment, we keep them all segregated and in their own tanks. And we don't have to worry about that because each species doesn't cross contaminate with the other, which is a good thing because when you have a tank that gets sick, like the tank we have in quarantine that this guy came from, you don't have to worry about any other fish tanks. These guys do need a little bit of wood. That's a perfect hiding place. They'll dig under there. They'll come out at night. They are fairly active at night. They're pretty good scavengers. I wouldn't put a bunch of them in your aquarium. At most, maybe two or three of them, just in case you have a problem. And you can't put these guys in a crowded aquarium. They need good, clean water. They don't react well. If there's an ammonia spike, they'll be one of the first guys to go. With all that in mind, these other catfish I like a lot. This guy, I'm so, so on. Not just because of my personal experience. We've sold tons of these guys. I find them too temperamental for most aquariums, bread and butter aquariums. I don't think, even though he's priced like a beginner fish, he's not a beginner fish. Here's a fungus cure. I'm just grabbing this because API, you're not a sponsor yet. Sarah and Heiger are, but they just don't have fungus cure. Fungus cure is from API. Pretty good treatment for your aquarium. And it's also, it's nice about grabbing things like this from the aquarium as opposed to something a little more hardcore that I have to use. It's not going to harm the other species if you follow the directions. The other thing you could add is a little salt to the aquarium. Watch the pH when you start adding stuff to your aquarium to treat a fish like this. In fact, this fish even is at the point of having a little fin rot on his dorsal fin, but it's already cleaned up. So when you get a fish that has fungus, a lot of times the fungus will eat away at his fins, like it has at his dorsal fin here. But once he starts recovering, the dorsal fins and whatever other fins may be compromised there, they do grow back. But without any treatment, a little fungus cure or something, he might fail, even with this little bit of fungus he has on him. So anyways, for that reason, obviously, we can't sell this fish. And we're just going to treat them until we hopefully we get them all cleaned up and we hold them until the fin grows, and then we can sell them. That is a great selection here and a somewhat okay selection here of small catfish for your aquarium. If you don't have a small aquarium, please get a small aquarium. And if you want to find any of the things we talked about on the show, go to your little mom and pop aquarium store. If you don't see it in there, tell them that's what you want. They can call someone like me and can ship it out to them. Or you can go to aquariumfish.com. I think they have all these species currently, and they might even have some clean bumblebee catfish there. They aren't mine, that's for sure. The rest of these fish, by the way, not all my fish. This is the only sick tank I have right now. The rest of them are fantastic stores that are watching this show. And most of all, if you do not have an aquarium, get an aquarium.