Electric catfish

[Holdenon5]

I have an electric catfish for a year know and his growth rate seems kind of slow. He's currently 6.5 inches. The person who had before me put it into a tank without it being cycled so my question would that alter his growth rate? From the ammonia and nitrites? He eating fine for me and everything. I might just be over paranoid.

[Jools]

Maybe it's one of the dwarf species?

Jools

[Viktor Jarikov]

I don't think temporary stress can affect long term growth rate.

We know so little about the e-cats. I've never heard of a dwarf in the trade / hobby but it does not mean they do not exist. The genus was rather recently split into 19 species while there used to be just one (?) species before - Malapterus electricus.

[Birger]

There are some such as M. beninensis that do seem to stay smaller.

Birger

[Silurus]

What size tank is it in? From personal experience, their growth rate slows when they are housed in tanks that are too small for them.

[faxling]

I have a Electric Catfish (malapterurus electricus, i think) in a quite small aquarium , 56 liter a got him a year ago and it was around 6 cm now he is 18 cm (inches ).
What do you feed it with ?

[pleconut]

Malapterurus electricus

With reference to the latest post, here's a direct link to the information page for this fish on the website.
Im not personally familiar with this one, in particular regards to how active it is or how fast it grows, but given the eventual potential size, you're very likely to eventually require an upgrade to a much bigger tank. If this is the fish you have got

[faxling]

Yes that is in plan