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Sturisoma panamense
The Royal Farlowella

by Steve Smith
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles

Figure 1. Sturisoma panamense Royal Farlowella

Royal Farlowellas or Sturisoma panamense are an interesting catfish. They grow to be quite large (over 6 inches) and have beautiful extensions on their finnage, Figure 1. They are quite happy in fairly hard water and actually don't like the low pH conditions of most soft water set-ups. The males can be identified by their whiskers as seen in Figures 2 and 3 which depict the view of the head areas of a male and female Royal Farlowella. They exhibit paternal egg care as the males sit on top of the eggs for approximately 5-6 days, cleaning the eggs, removing infertile eggs and finally assisting the fry to break free of the eggs shells at the end of the week. If one wants to remove the eggs from the fathers, care then assisting the fry to break free of their eggs will be part of the chore and can be achieved by rubbing the eggs when they are ready to hatch.

Figure 2. Underside view of male Royal Farlowella with bristles

Figure 3. Underside view of female Royal Farlowella w/o bristles

I obtained a pair of Royal Farlowellas from Greg Rau and placed them into a 20 gallon long tank and was quickly rewarded with 18 eggs. Unfortunately I was leaving for a week of vacation. The fry's only hope would be if they didn't hatch till I returned, which of course didn't happen. Upon my return I found about 6 fry scattered around the tank. This was not entirely bad as they were surviving on their own although over the next week the numbers dwindled. Greg's experience has been that the fry are content to sit someplace and wait for food to come to them and will starve to death waiting for food.

After an additional two weeks, I noticed that the female was making attempts to swim up next to the male who was usually positioned on the front of the glass directly in the outflow from the power filter. His reaction was to swim sideways in an apparent attempt to force her away. After several hours of this they settled down and laid almost 90 eggs as can be seen in Figure 4. For the next few days he positioned himself over top of the eggs to defend them. The female simply goes back to eating with no egg care provided. For the first several days the eggs are clear with a white-yellow yolk, and then after several days the eggs turn dark and can be seen in Figure 5.

Figure 4. Pair laying eggs 

Figure 5.  Male guarding 6 day old eggs- almost ready to hatch

The fry are perfect duplicates of their parents although they are probably 6mm when first hatched, Figure 6. In Figure 7 the fry can be seen in the background behind the male, and can be compared to the holes in a tank divider. I would be home for the hatching of this batch and took Greg's advice to suck the fry from their parents tank and place them in a small tank with vigorous aeration and good doses of APR. The fry tank had been set up for some time and had a thin layer of mulm on the sides of the tank which is good for these lazy feeders.

Figure 6. New fry

Figure 7. Dad with fry in background