The Puffer Forum

As I am not at the house very often right now, I asked my brother how big he thought they were now and he says they are actually still just under a foot! SO you can imagine how big they could get if they reached their potential of up to 2 feet!!!

There is a number of catfish traded as Catfish shark, even some Asian fishes sold as "Columbian". The real family Ariidae reaches maximum sizes between 20 and 100 cm. Don't ask for ID, they are only undoubtedly identified by features of their teeth, which is almost impossible on living specimens.

One of the regularly traded species is Hexanemichthys seemanni formerly known as Arius seemanni or Arius jordani. It can reach 35 cm maximum, but reaches most often only 20 cm even in large (>500 l) tanks. In LFS most often all shark catfish are labeled as A. seemanni or Columbian shark catfish, even if becoming up to 4 times larger. The real one can be a tankmate for GSP in a large tank, but they only show their typical schooling behavior and interaction in groups of 5 or more.

Another "good" shark catfish traded regularly is Mystus gulio. Looks quite similar, but is not closely related to the Ariidae. It reaches 20 cm, is peaceful, needs brackish water, tolerates freshwater for months, I am not sure about marine. Can probably even be spawned.

Wow! Great information! I would have loved to have known this before I got my beasts! As I said, I bought them under the impression that they would be around 10". I don't think my LFS knew though that the ones they sold me were going to get so big!

PS:

If your powerheads are turned off or are not very noisy, turn off all lights and wait next to the tank. From time to time you can hear clicking sounds. This is the shark catfish sonar. They produce (similar to bats) acoustic waves in the dark, you can actually hear. They use the reflections of these waves to navigate and find moving objects.

Cool! I will have to give that a try! Thats amazing!

Wow, how did this get from teeth trimming to catfish sonar?

Corvus wrote:PS:

If your powerheads are turned off or are not very noisy, turn off all lights and wait next to the tank. From time to time you can hear clicking sounds. This is the shark catfish sonar. They produce (similar to bats) acoustic waves in the dark, you can actually hear. They use the reflections of these waves to navigate and find moving objects.

That is coooool !!!!

Do you know of a really good fish store that would want them for display only? My local pet store has some tanks that are just for viewing...I told you it was a really good store!

But I am going to go to the speciality store to give mine up. They wont sell to someone without telling them about the particulars of each fish.

Good luck!

If I may return this thread to dentistry.

I got 2 Figure 8s a couple of months ago. They had been fed only flakes for about a year. Ones teeth are very long. I started a diet of mailnly snails and dried krill. The larger of the two appears to be fine. He eats well and his teeth are in good shape. The other one whose teeth were longer has gotten worse as I don't think he is able to truly bite down on the food.

I am going to trim his teeth. I read the stickied thread and found it quite complete. There is one line though that if the fish is weak from disease or poor eating not to do it.

I was concern by his change in body shape that he had IPs so I fed prazipro soaked food. After some time with no change or other signs of infection I began to think it is from not eating well.

I have enclosed a couple of pics hopefully these are clear enough

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.

Healthy tankmate


Puff in question


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Does the fish look weak? The reason I said not to tranq when weak from starvation--I did lose one that wouldn't wake up properly. Might be best to try trimming underwater or burp if puffed out of water or maybe use less clove oil & it might just be a lil relaxed & not totally knocked out.

Does the skinny one get much food? I am having a problem right now with a puffer who is very timid and slow and another puffer who is very aggressive and fast, when it comes to feeding. The one who is a timid eater is getting a bit thin and I have been trying to find ways to feed them apart but it seems like the aggressive one always ends up eating the other ones food anyways! Maybe he is just not getting much food?

If you look at it's mouth, it's slightly open--looks like overgrown teeth.

The other one certainly gets more food but part of the problem is the little one has to bite and shake off a little piece , where as the other just chomps down on it and swims away. The little one also gets food stuck in it's teeth regularly and this inhibits it further.

PP the toothy one acts fine has lots of energy and interacts with me lots. It is thinner but other than that it seems strong. Tomorrow, I am going to attempt trimming according to your sticky.

The teeth are definately overgrown. He's also very very skinny, so maybe use a smaller dose, though his color looks very good.

One tip, I'm not sure if its in the article, shake up a little water and the clove oil in a container first, to get it really broken up, then dump that into your bowl of water. It knocks the fish out quicker, which means less exposure time to the clove oil.

Yes, I should rewrite that part.