Borneo featherfin catfish

Care at a glance

Overview

The Borneo featherfin catfish is a small, retiring blackwater silurid that lives alone and spends the day tucked among leaf litter and shade. Keep a single fish, or at most one to a quiet tank; it is not social. It is mostly peaceful but will eat tiny fish and shrimp, so choose tankmates with care: small, calm, soft-water species that share its dim, acidic conditions. It leans on live and frozen foods, such as bloodworm, small earthworm pieces, mosquito larvae and brine shrimp, taken slowly along the bottom. A dim, tannin-stained tank of about 110 liters or more, with gentle flow, suits it.

In the wild

Silurichthys phaiosoma comes from peat-swamp forests and blackwater streams of Borneo and the Malay region, tea-colored water stained by tannins and floored with fallen leaves. Copy that with a soft dark substrate, a deep layer of leaf litter and driftwood, dim lighting, and slow, gentle flow. The water should be warm at 23 to 27 degrees Celsius and distinctly soft and acidic, from about pH 4.5 to 6.5. Botanicals and regular small water changes keep the blackwater chemistry stable.

Good to know

Silurichthys phaiosoma is a sheatfish of the Siluridae, reaching about 15 centimeters, with a slim dusky body and a very long anal fin that runs most of the way to the tail. Its mottled brown coloring blends into submerged leaves, and it rests low among litter by day. Species in this genus serve as useful indicators of healthy peat-swamp forest. There is no aquarium breeding record.

Did you know

Settled among dead leaves in dark water, its dull brown, leaf-shaped body is easy to overlook entirely, a catfish that gets by as a piece of drifting forest litter.

Common questions

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