Beware the Catfish!

[Maria]

Beware! I found my Paddletail like this earlier today. After 30 minutes of prying I managed to get the fish out with no severe injuries. Below you can see a barb actually poking through.

[Ian Rigg]

which is why the only tank mate for a newt should be a newt of the same type and even then with paddletails thats not always a good idea...also if the catfish was a tropical fish (i can't tell by the tail) then the temp required for the catfish would be too high for the newt...most catfish have spines and some grow to a fair old size with big mouths and can swallow large prey so you have to be careful what you house them with or one day it could be the catfish eating the newt......ian

[Mark Aartse-Tuyn]

Wow, that looks nasty! A perfect example of what can go wrong when you mix fish with newts. With luck you'll have made someone think twice - I'm always amazed at the keepers who even after reading the mixing disaters page still think it's worth the risk. Thanks for sharing and I'm glad your newt came out reasonably unscathed (although the fish probably didn't fair so well).

[Maria]

This has certainly been a learning lesson for me. I havn't even had this newt for a month, and am new to keeping this species. She's doing fine today thankfully.

The catfish was a baby bullhead (from my best guess) and no, he didn't fare well at all. He was dead by the time I realized what had happened.

It took me about 30 minutes to get the fish out, I cut the body off and managed to get the head out but the barbs still remained. Using a pair of tweezers I managed to push back on the barbs and get them out.

I just wanted to post and let everyone see what species mixing can result in.

[Jennewt]

Wow, that's awful, but thank you for posting the photo.

Maria, may I use your photo on the Species Mixing page of Caudata Culture? It's a good warning to others.

[Turtlestork]

Hey. Yeah, I must not have looked very hard at the pic on TT. That is worse than I thought I saw at first! He should be fine, though, they have great regenerative abilities.

TS(from TT)

[Maria]

Originally Posted by Jennewt

Wow, that's awful, but thank you for posting the photo.

Maria, may I use your photo on the Species Mixing page of Caudata Culture? It's a good warning to others.

Yes, of course you may. That is why I posted, to warn others.

And hello Turtlestork, small internet eh? :)

Just a update, the newt is doing fine no major problems so far.

[John Clare]

Another anecdote but of no relevance to newts. I had this happen when I had a fancy goldfish (large Red Oranda) in a tank with a Corydoras cat (it was adult size). I really liked both fish. Came to the tank one day and there is the goldfish with a tail sticking out of his mouth and impaled in 3 places from the dorsal and pectoral fins. I had to get out some surgical scissors, grab the goldfish and then go inside its mouth and cut the Catfish's fins with the scissors, so at least one of the two would survive. I had had both fish for many years and it was rough on the catfish but what can you do.