Paracanthopoma is a genus of minute catfish in family Trichomycteridae, the pencil catfish - a South American family best known for the blood-feeding and gill-parasitic habits found in some of its members, including the notorious candiru. The atlas's two species, from Brazil and Venezuela, are tiny even by the family's standards, measuring only around 1 in as adults: slender, scaleless, eel-like fish built to slip into tight spaces rather than swim in open water.
Neither species has an established place in the aquarium hobby, and both are Not Evaluated for conservation status, which is typical for a small-bodied, little-collected genus known mainly from scattered museum specimens rather than sustained field study. Details of their biology - diet, any host relationships, and reproduction - are not well documented in the mainstream literature, and any claim about their specific habits should be treated as provisional rather than settled.