Feeding: I tried (try) putting fish pellets in the pieces of fish that I feed. These are much more balanced. But it looks like it turns and moves its food after swallowing and it blows like after 15 minutes the orange colored pellets out in dust clouds. I tried different dry food and it’s the same ...

Yeah, I have witnessed the fry run into them. When they come into contact with the tenticals it Cleary hurts them, they quickly dart off. Although I doubt that They could kill them but in mass numbers in cant be good. I'm not surprised it hurts - like most cnidarians hydra have stinging cells in th...

Yep thats it. Thanks Darrel. Has anyone ever had experience with using fenbendazole with fry? Is there any evidence that they are actually hurting the fry? I have had hydra outbreaks in many sorts of tanks before (although never fry tanks) and I've always just ignored them. I've watched them strugg...

Wheter being blind is an inconvenience or suffering is, I think, partly a matter of intelligence. Your blind friend knows he cannot see, and is able to adapt himself. But a dog, which does not understand what being blind means, will have a hard time adapting. I think suffering or being inconvient i...

I wonder whether that is true. I once had a Pteroplichthys pardalis with 1 eye - it had no problem competing with it´s conspecifics. But would the same go for all catfish? Even the free swiming ones who are active during the day, such as the Kryptopterus species? There probably are some species whe...

Well going back to the main focus of the topic (albinos) certain albinos, such as chickens (not necessarily fish though), are certainly not adapted well even for the average chicken yard. If you click the study near the top of the page, it says they have difficulty finding food and water and needed...

Also, unintended consequences that are mostly invisible but rear their ugly heads under certain situations. What if the purple artificial variant of a fish was less hardy in the face of power outages? Personally I would not get a less hardy fish just because it is pretty. Think of the potential hea...

I've used JB Water Weld for small jobs in tanks without issues. I'm sure it's not totally fish safe but I first used it in an emergency when the other option was that every fish died and I never saw issues. I suspect the amount used for most jobs is too small to be a serious issue. However, since it...

Why are dyed fish, deformed fish (balloon paroon shark as an example) and big fish in tiny tanks scorned by Planet Catfish, but not albinos? Aren't they nearly blind and hypersensitive to sun damage of skin (let's ignore genetic inbreeding, which can be corrected)? Albinos, longfins, and leucistic ...

I noticed that the oxygen level was on the low side after night so I increased it. Had no spawns since then. Tomorrow is water change day which often triggers spawning frenzy. We'll see if the high oxygen level did the trick. If water changes are the issue you might be able to reduce that by "...

Mine didn't grow at all in over 2 months eating blood worms every day, I'm not sure why because I've seen some pretty big ones for sale here in the city In our short (and small-sample) feeding trial we found that we could leave the amount of bloodworms fed to the electric catfish out of the dataset...

Many catfish do appear to be capable of producing swim-bladder noises as well as pectoral fin noises. The pectoral fin noises can include stridulation where a bone is rubbed across a series of ridges or bumps on another bone. This is the same way crickets and cicadas produce noises. Neither of those...

Very cool about the electric catfish. 350 Volts of fun! Less cool when you take the volts through your thumb. Still, he's a little guy so it doesn't hurt too bad yet. Interestingly, the voltages reported for these guys seem to vary by about 100V - I've seen as high as 450V and yet you're also not t...

We did some basic tests on the food my electric catfish eats (Hikari Sinking Carnivore Pellets) and discovered that the dry pellets weighed only about 30% of what the wet ones did. So yes, dry pellets can swell a lot. I don't worry about it with the electric catfish because he generally doesn't even...

I honestly never thought about A pleco until it was mentioned fearing once the rainbow shark matured it would be in direct conflict with A pleco being so territorial but like many have mentioned over there A pleco would be in no danger because of its armor plating. Technically corys are also armor-...

Ok. I may try a few of the floaters I have available and see who thrives. I don't know if I have anything specifically tropical that floats, but I'll also keep an eye out at fish stores.

Any thoughts on using Eurasian millfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) instead of duckweed? That's locally invasive around here and I have some in a water sample if it would work better than the duckweed.

Either way, it sounds like I should use some nice, removable floating plant.

I should imagine salticids would be an interesting area for research. They are, and that's part of their usefulness. It's easy to get research assistants who want to help out with them. See also: electric catfish. Since my contract is mostly teaching I'm pretty actively encouraged to make sure my r...

I've just noticed your user name, do you have a scientific interest in "Wolf" Spiders? Yes. I do a variety of predation ecology experiments and at one point our lab used a lot of lycosids as the predators (frequently on acridid grasshoppers). I've now moved on to more salticids and, obvio...

Alright, here's what everyone's been asking for. Water parameters: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate. I was so suspicious of this (although we've been doing daily water changes) that I compared the ammonia test tube to an ammonia test of my own tap water and they looked identical. (I never think test ...

I can get photos and current water parameters tomorrow. The lighting is relatively low - he's got two long tube shelters to hide from the light in and the room is only lit when someone is working in it, although the blinds on a window across the room (but not a straight line across) are always half-...

The tank has been cycled for a while now - he's been in it for months - but I'm not convinced that the filters are the best. (I also think there was a day when the filter got left off after a prior water change.) I've been gradually changing out the filters but maybe I need to up my schedule on that...

My juvenile electric catfish appears to have streaks of blood in his fins. They are not evenly distributed but in spots - there's currently a spot in the lower middle caudal fin, for instance. While these areas seem to be longer along the fin rays than across fin rays they don't necessarily go end-t...

What I like about catfish is that within one order of fishes there is such incredible diversity and so my wishlist (assuming infinite money, tank space, etc) would include some of the weirder morphologies - Farlowella and Chaca chaca probably top that list. I already have Kryptopterus vitreolus and ...

Hey everyone, I've finally got myself a properly sized tank at home and I'm looking to stock it with catfish. So I have some compatibility questions to work out before I finish up the tank set-up. The tank is a 55 gallons long (48" x 13" x 20") and the plan is to filter it using a lar...

If this paper is accepted there will need to be a revision to the information on the Wels species entry on this site, as well as a change in the answer to question 2 ("What is the largest catfish in the world?") in the Catfish FAQ in the Help section of this site. After all, this paper giv...

Thanks. That's helpful. I won't bother looking for any Chaca then until I get a handle on a food source.

I've got to bump this to ask: is 15 gallons for an adult Chaca? I know they don't move much but I can't tell if this recommendation is for a sedentary 7" adult or just for a juvenile.

I can buy 8 feet of bamboo pipe in various diameters for less than $10 USD I've had good luck getting bamboo for various projects completely free. If you live in the right climate people will plant it as an ornamental and then it will go nuts and get everywhere and either the people who planted it ...

Great. He's definitely responding to food faster now, and seems to care less that I'm watching him eat.