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Aquarium Care: Very peaceful species which will do well in a quite community tank where the tank mates are non-aggressive. Spends most of the day buried in the sand substrate. Provide sand as a substrate and a planted dark area to make them feel more secure in their surroundings. Can be kept in fresh or brackish water systems. The males are more colourful than the females and also possess a longer dorsal and pectoral fins. Reproduction: The eggs stick to the females abdomen after spawning. Short stalks appear with the eggs attached and only disappear when the eggs hatch. Diet: Live and frozen foods such as mosquito larvae, tubifex, earthworms, whiteworms and small crustacea. Tablet foods and sunken flake that lies on the bottom is also taken. Etymology: The genus name platystacus: Platys = broad; acus = needle. The specific name cotylephorus: meaning sites for the attachment of developing embryos, refering to the eggs hanging from the ventral area.

Mottled Eel-Tailed Banjo Catfish

Aspredo cotylephorus, Silurus hexadactylus, Cotylephorus blochii, Aspredo sexcirrhis, Aspredo spectrum, Platystacus nematophorus

Aspredinidae

South America: Coastal waters and lower portions of rivers of northern South America, from Venezuela to northern Brazil. 

30.0cm. (12ins)

22-25°c (71-77°f.)

6.5-8.0.

Baensch, H.A. and R. Riehl 1985 Aquarien atlas. Band 2. Mergus, Verlag für Natur- und Heimtierkunde GmbH, Melle, Germany. 1216 p.
Catfish Study Group; Information Sheet no.97.
Ferraris, C.J. Jr., 2007. Checklist of catfishes, recent and fossil (Osteichthyes: Siluriformes), and catalogue of siluriform primary types. Zootaxa 1418:1-628.