PlanetCatfish.com

hello everybody i love the look of columbian sharks and i know that they big and are a brackish species
but i am not willing to give up my current species for brackish water so i was wondering if they could live in freshwater or would it just be a cruel way to slowley kill them?

I would say

just be a cruel way to slowley kill them?

Have you read these already?

and the CotM

If I had a friend with a marine tank I would raise a baby one and got it to him as it got big but unfortunately I don't so I guess no columbian shark for me

Yes, Dave's links say it all. Young ones tolerate fresh water far better than older ones. I've seen them "appearing" well and happy in many freshwater tanks at LFSs. But just like the Cat-eLog says, one will need to start adding salt soon and start adding it progressively more and more. This is one of the reasons, I think, that, having been to ~100 good LFSs, I'm yet to see one columbian shark larger than 3"-4" TL and I've never seen a trade-in (!) I guess, they never make it, for the reasons stated.

bigamefish wrote:If I had a friend with a marine tank I would raise a baby one and got it to him as it got big but unfortunately I don't so I guess no columbian shark for me

Not only a friend with a marine tank, a friend with a LARGE marine tank (I haven't done the math, but somewhere in the region of 500g/2000 liter or more, I'd guess), that has no fish (or other critters) that will become prey to the columbian shark catfish - which makes the number of available marine tanks much lower - these aren't really "reef fish", which is what most people have in their marine tanks.

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Mats