A tiny catfish that thrives in cooler, flowing water? Consider me interested, writes Nathan Hill.
WORDS: NATHAN HILL
PROBABLY MY BIGGEST hang up with aquaria is how still they are. As someone who jumps in every stream I find, I’m fascinated with the ebb and flow of water, and I lament that so few tanks in the UK are set up to replicate laminar movement.
As such, I offer the following catfish with a proviso. If you’re going to seek some out, give them a home that feels like the real deal, and I will salute you. Assuming I don’t do it first.
The catfish you see here is a marvel of compaction and river dwelling. Pseudolaguvia shawi, a rare treat that might occur under the name of bee catfish if it pops up in a specialist store, is tiny and well adapted. Officially reaching just 3.8cm (though there’s a report of a 4.5cm one out there in a tank), it comes equipped with a ‘thoracic adhesive apparatus’ on its underside—a patch of ruffled, folded skin that it can use to suction itself onto surfaces and avoid being swept away. It even has pectoral fins curved in such a way that it can crawl over rocks in the face of moving water.
P. shawi is an erethistid catfish from India, closely related to the little mothcats (Hara and Erethistes) and the charming Caelatoglanis. It may or may not be a sisorid catfish, pending with authorities you follow, and it certainly appears similar to Glyptothorax which remains in the Sisoridae family. But let’s focus less on classification and more on care.
Like its many cousins (there are 21 currently recognised Pseudolaguvia species) it’s a stream dweller, and it likes things cool. Any clued-up aquarist will know that this means it has a high (a really high) oxygen requirement, so sufficient surface movement and turnover is essential. But it’s not a shoaling fish, so whether you opt for two or ten is neither here nor there.
Despite the small size, I’d be cautious about placing a bee catfish in too small a tank. I mean, you could keep some in a static 45cm set-up, aerated to the nines with airstones, but I feel it’s doing it a disservice. I’d suggest something around 60cm, bedecked with a fine sand substrate, plenty of rounded rocks, and a couple of small flow pumps at one end blasting across the top of the rocks. The rocks will be used for shelter, but bee cats will also take to burying themselves in the sand with just their nostrils emerging. A little leaf litter might work, but in the presence of flow
