Please Help me to ID this Fish

[NiceFeelings]

I bought this fish at the local pet store two weeks ago and they told me it's Freshwater Barracuda. But I did some research online about Freshwater Barracuda, all the pictures of Freshwater Barracuda online looks so different than this fish. they all shows a big black dot in the middle of the fish tail and very pointy mouth. But this fish has like a Leopard type dots on the tail and other fins and a shark like mouth, much more rounded than the online pictures of Freshwater Barracudas.
This fish is 6 inches long right now. two weeks ago when i bought it, it was 5 inches. It's freshwater, not salt.

 

[Masta_Cheef]

Sorry I can't help you, but it does sort of resemble a barracuda in that it has the same sort of mouth shape. BTW, beautiful pictures you took of it. What brand of camera did you use?

 

[Lotus]

It could be some kind of pike... but I'm not sure.

 

[NiceFeelings]

Sorry I can't help you, but it does sort of resemble a barracuda in that it has the same sort of mouth shape. BTW, beautiful pictures you took of it. What brand of camera did you use?

I took it with my Canon 10D. It's an old camera, 20D already out, but it's still a nice camera. I resized those pictures already. the originals are way too big to post them on here.

thank for the help.

 

[Dragonett]

Isn't that a Gar of some sort?

 

[kindaconfused]

i would eigther assume it was a gar or think that it might be a little young and they dont start getting the longer mouth and spots till they are a little oldeer. Im just making assumpsions.

 

[wayne]

No, I've seen these but I don't recall the name. I have a feeling it's an African Wolf Fish or similar, but there's also a S American characin I don't recall the name for.. It's not a Hoplias.

 

[GoldLenny]

I think the key to this fish is the adipose fin (the little small black one behind the dorsal fin). At least it should preclude several types of fish.

This page implies that Characins have an adipose fin.

http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/characins/characin.htm

"A visual clue to a Characin is the adipose fin which has an unknown purpose. There are several genera which have no adipose fin, and several catfish that also have an adipose fin. All the Characins have teeth and scales and none of them have barbels or whiskers."

 

[wayne]

It doesn't really look like any of the Hydrocynus species on fishbase. I need tothink about this, but I've seen a tankfull, which worked it's way down to one in short order, in the last 6 months.
Check out the Hydrocynus though

 

[NiceFeelings]

do you guys think this is my fish or close to it?

http://translate.google.com/transla...refox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&sa=G

 

[GoldLenny]

do you guys think this is my fish or close to it?

http://translate.google.com/transla...refox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&sa=G

I saw a Pike that looked closer to your fish than this one.

 

[GoldLenny]

If you could count the number of rays in the dorsal fin, then google that number of rays, it might help. That is one of the parameters for ID'ing fish.

 

[Firebug]

I think you're on the right track, NiceFeelings. I think it could be an African Tiger fish (Hydrocynus vittatus). Very scary fish, if you ask me!

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Oh! Imagine cleaning algae! How fun it would be.....

 

[jediinthedark]

http://www.opefe.com/hydrocynus.html
I don't know... I think the Dorsal fin on this fish is too far back for it to be an African Tiger. But the Adipose fin is right on.

Here is a picture of a true Freshwater Baracuda. http://www.networksplus.net/maxmush/ctenolucius_hujeta.html
The head and tailfin are wrong for your fish.

The African Tiger is the closest match so far, but the dorsal fin placement bothers me.

Still looking...

 

[Firebug]

Plus the fact that NiceFeeling's fish has a spotted caudal fin, and a tiger fish doesnt.

 

[GoldLenny]

It's definitely not the Tiger fish (head and mouth are way different).

I don't see an adipose fin on the Pike Tetra pics but otherwise they look very similar.

 

[GoldLenny]

Maybe it's a hybrid.

 

[NiceFeelings]

I guess it's a newly mutated African Tiger fish group or a cross breeding between 2 different types of fish close in family. lol.

I’ve been searching online from the movement I got this fish, but still can't find a fish looking exactly or even close to it. I guess the local pet shop doesn't know it's name also, so they just put Freshwater Baracuda on it, But Freshwater Baracuda looks so different than this fish. I guess the closest looking fish as of now is African Tiger fish, or a same family fish that's just discovered.

Right now this fish is in a 75 gallon tank (48" long and 18" wide), with 2 silver dollars and 1 small Datnioide Tiger Fish. After 2 weeks+ of monitoring this fish, the behavior of this fish is very calm, not aggressive at all, never bothered any of the tank mates. He always runs away or step aside when the small tiger datnioide runs into him. I guess this fish won’t bother any fish that’s not big enough to fit into his mouth. The speed of this fish is godly lighting fast, when I tried to catch the fish, it can go from tank side to side, 48 inches long in less than a second and stop in a split of a second without bumping into the glass wall. It's just moves really really fast, very hard to catch in the tank even when I use big net. When I bought this fish in the pet store, they had a good 10 minutes just to catch this fish and put it in the bag, lol. It eats blood worms and feeder fish. It doesn’t chew the feeder fish; he just catches them and swallows them. And he only eats when he’s hungry. I have about 50 1" feeder fishes in the tank and he eats about 3 a day. I could be away for days or even weeks without worrying about this fish because it only eats when he's hungry, unlike my Flower Horn, eats 24 hours a day and finishes everything no matter how much food I give him.

 

[Firebug]

Well...I'd be scared to death to have something like that in my tank! But then, any fish with teeth does!