Taxonomy & naming
Erethistoides sicula was described by Heok Hee Ng in 2005, with the type locality on the Schutunga River, a tributary of the Mansai River at Ansole in West Bengal, India. It is a member of the Erethistidae, the Asian hill-stream catfishes, treated here under Sisoridae as the atlas family list does. The Catalog of Fishes lists it as valid.
The genus name combines the genus Erethistes with the Greek for resembling. The epithet is Latin for small dagger.
Morphology
A small, flattened catfish with the broad head and ribbed, tubercled body of the erethistid hill-stream group. FishBase gives a maximum of 1.5 in SL, which makes it one of the smaller catfishes the trade sells.
Habitat
FishBase records it from the Mansai River drainage in northern West Bengal, a tributary of the Brahmaputra. It is a bottom-dwelling fish of swift, clear hill streams. No temperature, pH or hardness range is recorded.
Feeding
The diet in the wild is not described in the sources the atlas uses. Erethistid catfishes of this size generally pick small insect larvae and other micro-invertebrates from the substrate, and in the aquarium finely chopped frozen foods and live daphnia or cyclops suit them.
Mating
Mating is not described for this species.
Breeding
No spawning behaviour or captive breeding is recorded for Erethistoides sicula.
In the aquarium
Give it a cool, strongly oxygenated tank with rock, cobbles and fine gravel, and a group of its own kind or very calm tankmates, since it is too small to compete with active fish for food. It is rarely offered and fish come from wild collection.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assessed Erethistoides sicula as Data Deficient in 2009. Too little is known of its range and population to place it in a threat category. It is known from a single small drainage.