PlanetCatfish.com

I admit here and now that I've added to the problem. The PetCo a block away from me got in some four inch long banjo cats, and I grabbed all five of them up; other than the fact they were sitting on top of the .5 inch gravel and the fact they don't appear to have been fed for a week or two, I have some good hopes for them. They're in a tank now with sand and leaf litter...time and tomorrow morning will tell how many alive I have left!

Well done!! They will certainly reward you by staying alive.
Seriously, I know what you mean. Sometimes you feel the necessity to save animals from certain stores, because if you don't, they will certainly die.
I've been there too; not always succesfully though.

Fingers are crossed still....almost all of them looked dead when they went into the tank, but come this morning, I see no floaters, no stomach-bulging amano shrimp, and we'll see....

UPDATE

All 5 banjos were placed into a 10 gallon QT tank filtered via sponge filter and masses of duckweed. Substrate is sand, and I tossed in some leaves for them to hide under.

Here's what has me worried. They all seem to be good eaters thus far, but at any given time of the day, I can see one, two, sometimes three just laying in the plants, above the sand, and not hidden in the leaves. The duckweed does not block out the 2wpg from the lights, so the tank is still lit. I have yet to see any of them dive under the sand, so I'm worried that they may not be doing that great after all, if they are not displaying normal banjo behavior. Any thoughts?

Perhaps they need a bit of time to "remember" what normal behavior is? Maybe the lights aren't that bright compared to those at the store(?) - I've seen some where I was left to wonder if they were selling the fish or interrogating them...

Best of luck to you!

Jen

It's not unusual for them to rest on the sand or even above it. Don't forget that burying themselves into sand is a means to escape from something. But if there's no cause for them to do so, why should they? Please don't start thinking that they may be too weak to dig themselves in.
More important is the fact that they eat well. That's good.

yup.

and let's not forget that the optimal mimicry for a fish that looks like a bit of wood or a leaf (or both ), and behaves like a piece of plant as well is to be visible, laying on top of the sand, between the other leaflitter.