shovelnose cat fish?

Question

I have been looking into geting a shovelnose cat fish for about a year now, lots of reading on them.
anyway I would like to know from those of you who keep them what do you think of them?
and has anyone tryed to breed them from what Ive seen its says no one has yet to do this.
Please only answer if you keep them

Answer 1

I kept one for about 5 years once. It eventually out grew a 220 gallon tank and I had to donate it to a public aquarium. No doubt the main reason the have not been bred in captivity is the size requirement for growing several such monster fish to full size together. This is one of several fish that I think should be banned from the aquarium trade as it cannot be properly cared for but by a select few people willing and able to spend the huge sums of money required to maintain such a fish.

Even as much as I enjoy breeding fish and enjoy attempting difficult species, I never had the money to try these guys.

MM

Answer 2

These are not for the newbie, to really do well they need a very very large tank, they get huge. The Tigers seem to get about 2 feet long in aquaria. Be prepared to spend some money on feeding your friend. They are carnivores and eat fish, tons of fish. As young fish feed them guppies and rosy reds. As they grow it's goldfish. You can also treat them with nightcrawlers from the bait shop. They feed at night, so you might wind up putting the feeders in the tank during the day, and then finding them gone the next morning, your fish will have nice bulging little belly...

As far as breeding, they have not yet been a report of breeding in captivity. I'm guessing that being river fish, they need to move to spawning areas, or require really large, like public aquarium sized, tanks to breed..


Good luck.

Answer 3

I have a Lima Shovelnose that I have had for 10 years now. He is jusr over a foot long and lives in a 55 gallon tank. I wish I could get him a bigger tank, just don't have the room for it now.
He is by far my favorite fish, but mainly on how I got him. I got him from an awful store. They had those slotted over flows in the corner, with the egg crate on top. he was only about 3" long, and got caught in the over flow. The place was catch your own fish, and he was in a $1.99 row. So I picked him up, and put him in their cup things, and brought him home.
His tank is in my room, so I can see him at night. He loves to swim straight up in the front of the tank into the filter flow. I think he is swimming up stream. It is hard to get things to live with him, he is very mellow, and either gets beat up by larger fish, or eats them if they are smaller. He currently lives with a frontosa, but now that the frontosa is getting bigger, there is not enough space/territory for the 2 of them. If I have to get rid of one, no matter how cool that frontosa is, I will never get rid of the shovelnose.
I fed him guppies when I first got him, just to get him started, but after about a week got him switched over to pellets which he has eaten exclusively since (except the occasional not-well-chosen- tank mate.) He feed a mix of cichlid and spiralina pellets.