Experiment

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 01 Jan 2003, 09:12

Okay... I have yet to see my asian red tail eat since I got him 3 weeks ago. He never leaves his driftwood hollow and I am getting concerned about if he is eating or not. I have tried to sit there and turn down all of the lights, to the point where I can barely see them. Then I have dropped a small cube of blood worms. I see the 2 pictus come flying by and gorge themselves on the worms, but no red tail. So experiment time. I have a sony handicam with the nightshot feature (infrared) on it. I have set it up in front of the tank and have turned off all of the lights. I am going to record the next 3-4 hours and see if the red tail is coming out or not.

BTW the night shot feature is like having true night vision goggle. It is nice and bright green!! LOL... oh btw found that the 2 pictus eyes reflect back when using the infrared in their eyes, but oddly enough the Pleco does not.

I will let you know how this goes.

Thanks

SH

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 01 Jan 2003, 21:58

Well I saw the little devil a couple of times. However I need to change the angle of the camera, as I believe he forages on the other side of the tank. I did note that one of my Pitus is very active, as is my common pleco!

I am setting up a webserver this week. I will post the links to the avi's if anyone is interested.

Thanks

SH

Caol_ila · Post by **Caol_ila** » 02 Jan 2003, 17:24

Hi!

Cool idea id like to see those...

greetings
C

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 02 Jan 2003, 20:28

Hi,

I am almost done with the webserver. I will post the link hopefully today. I got about 2 hours last night. And the red tail was far more active.

Stay tuned.

Thanks

SH

Caol_ila · Post by **Caol_ila** » 02 Jan 2003, 20:37

good to hear...about the server and the cat!

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 03 Jan 2003, 11:03

Okay here is the link to my website. However the IP addy may change today... so the link may fail (I am working on getting a static IP or at least get dynamic DNS working).

Anways just created the website and put in 3 videos. This is beta.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

SH

http://67.112.120.67/index.html

Note: I will be doing a day shot as well. Just to get a feel of how the tank is laid out.

Caol_ila · Post by **Caol_ila** » 03 Jan 2003, 13:27

nice...the angle on the 2nd and 3rd movies is much better...way to go

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 08 Jan 2003, 06:12

Well the site is up at http://www.mickenator.com. I have a dynamic IP so every 3 days the site goes down for about 3-5 hours while the dns servers update the IP change. LOL

Anyways let me know what you think.

Cheers

Sir Helm

Chrysichthys · Post by **Chrysichthys** » 09 Jan 2003, 17:41

I am puzzled as to why your Asian red-tail isn't feeding. Mine is a ravenous feeder which prefers dim light but doesn't need pitch darkness. It has recently learned to take food from my hand. I would first do the usual water quality tests. If all is OK I would try a live feeder fish of suitable size, such as a neon, left overnight (moving out any other predators first). It's possible he has never eaten anything but live fish before, and you will have to acclimatise him. Even so, I'm still surprised because they're much less finicky than the big South American predators. If he won't even take feeders he may have a disease of some sort. Let us know how it works out. Oh, and my red-tail loves chopped earthworms. You might try that.
I don't think you will be able to get a clear infrared image of a fish, since they're cold-blooded. There will be little contrast with the surrounding water.

Post by **Silurus** » 09 Jan 2003, 18:11

Hemibagrus aren't finicky eaters and they adjust very quickly to eating most foods. I've caught small Hemibagrus in the wild and they were gorging on Tetra Bits after several hours in the tank.
Maybe your Hemibagrus is being put off by the pims.

Heok Hee

SirHelm · Post by **SirHelm** » 10 Jan 2003, 06:10

I have no idea... once you guys id'd it as an asian red tail.. i sorta exected to see a monster in the tank... but he is very very very shy... a good example of that is in the 4th video with the tubifex worms. You see him come out... brush past one and then dart back into his little hidey hole.... He seems to be feeding... (he is still alive after all and he is the second oldest thing in the tank now....) but I mean he is very very skittish, and he will not come out unless it is totally dark. Maybe he is just that way. I bought him from the LFS where they must had 30 of them housed in the same tank.... with little or no shelter. Maybe there is hope of him for the future? Or once he gets big enough he will begin to go "psycho". Also how fast to asian red tails grow. I expect to have a 100 gallon tank within the next month or so. If he goes in there will he grow faster?

BTW I will be getting some armoured catfish once I get the 100g.... can they survive with an adult red tail??

Thanks as always

Sir Helm

Chrysichthys · Post by **Chrysichthys** » 22 Jan 2003, 16:14

My Asian red-tail has grown from three inches to nine inches since I got him about 18 months ago. He doesn't bother the Sailfin pleco I keep with him, but it's bigger than him. He took an intense dislike to my Giraffe catfish, though, and I had to move it to another tank.

Post by **Silurus** » 22 Jan 2003, 16:29

I think plecs are heavily-armored enough that they are probably the only fish (if big enough) to survive the attentions of an Asian redtail.
The redtail will probably end up scratching itself badly if it got too persistent.

Chrysichthys · Post by **Chrysichthys** » 22 Jan 2003, 17:40

If by armoured cats you mean Corydoras or Brochis, they can't be kept with a red-tail. My red-tail killed a brochis but wasn't able to eat it. He was carrying it around the tank like a dog with a dead rabbit. I moved the rest of the brochis out and got Synodontis eupterus as scavengers. So far he has left them alone. His other tankmates besides the pleco are a Megalodoras uranoscopus, Pseudodoras niger, Synodontis longirostris, tiger shovelnose and common shovelnose. He doesn't mind these; he only took exception to the giraffe cat.

Post by **Silurus** » 22 Jan 2003, 17:43

Sorry, I meant only large loricariids. I'm surprised that your redtail got along well with the rest of the fish (I suppose they are larger than it is). The ones I've kept will kill just about anything I would put in the tank.

Chrysichthys · Post by **Chrysichthys** » 27 Jan 2003, 17:49

Mine seems to be a relative pussycat. He's even hand-tame. He comes up with the niger and the longirostris for treats. He ignores the shovelnoses altogether.
When I first went to get him, somebody accidentally took him after he was bagged up for me on a busy Saturday. Of all the fish to go astray.... He had a midnight banquet in their community tank. They brought him back in haste the next morning.

Experiment

Experiment

Asian red-tail feeding