I have the chance of purchasing a clarias after looking for one for a long time,I have found one at my lfs but the owners do not know what sort he is and after looking through the catElog im still a little stumped but im leaning towards C.Batrachus.
How much would one of these normally cost ? I ask this because he only asks 18 pounds for it and i was expecting him to ask much more.
One last queston is the max size of the fish i have two different books one states 18 inches and the other 30 to 40 inches,Which is correct ?
Really,A little expensive uh,I will try and knock the price down and thanks for the info on size its what i wanted to here theres no way i could home a 40 inch fish But the fish is lovely and if he wont come down on price i may have to pay it,What do they normally go for then ?
If you can provide me with a pic of the fish, I could *try* to identify it for you (the operative word is "try").
Given that C. batrachus is bred commercially in large numbers, 18 pounds sounds kinda high.
I will try for a pic of the clarias for you HH,But i leaned towards batrachus because of his colouration,The body is a creamy colour all over but he has a mottled brown patches on his sides.
I will try and get a pic of him though i need to know exactly what he is and how big hes gonna get before i purchase him
I guess price will also depend on how big the fish is.
I`m looking for a big female clarias but all i`ve managed to find locally is 1.5" long tiddlers at £4.50 each and a 12" male at £60, which i think is a tad overpriced and the wrong gender
They grow real fast though so it might be better (financially) to buy a small one.
Thanks very much for the pics.....Awesome The clarias is already over 5 inches and pretty thick also im told he feeds well but im yet to see that,After looking at the pics it does look like Batrachus i must say.
jurassic i paid £10 each for one that size and one an inch smaller
they seem to be apearing a bit more in the shops around me now, i bought a £4.50 tiddler about 3 weeks ago
in the shop near me they have about a 12 inch one which i think is male for £40
hi jp
I have seen a few of these in my time, usually they tend to be in the region of 15inches, but i have seen one (c. batracus) at 20inches and having quite a large girth.
but they will spawn at a smaller size; years ago a friend spawned these when they were
around 12inches, about that time you could pick 12inchers up for not more than 10 pound
try and offer your LFS 15 pound, i think he would probably except.
We have a clarias batrachus. It lives in a 6'x2'x2' tank with a leiarius pictus and a glyptoperichthys gibbiceps. At the moment it is about 15" long with a belly to match hehehe. When we bought it, it was only a couple of inches long and cost a couple of pounds. It is tame and friendly and will come to the glass front and also come to the surface and take food from your hand. They will eat anything lol. I don't know what sex it is, how do you sex them?
Hiya en1gma nice to meet yet another clarias fan!!
i've read somewhere you can sex them by white spots on the fins, however 2 of mine are albinos which renders that method useless
my friend wolfgang who is prolly one of the most knowlegeable ppl on clarias i have spoken to tells me the females are much deaper in the body than the males, i have one of each so can see what he means
the female has a much broader head and is much fatter all over , the male is more eel like even when he is full of food doing an impression of an egg with a tail he is much slimmer than the female.
hope that helps
you can always post a picture and see if i can tell from that or maybe get wolfgang to take a look.
Mine also feed from my hand at the top of the tank and like to play a mean game of follow my finger!
nice to meet you
lucy
Ours is a marbled clarias and rather nicely marked as well. It lives with a leiarius pictus and a glyptoperichthys gibbiceps. It grabs the food from my hand otherwise the pictus will have it hehehehe. We call it sausage cos when it was younger (before it developed the round belly) it looked like a sausage with fins lol. They have such character, you can't help but love them lol.
Kat.
"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice" H.P. Baxxter
i see him on your avatar thingy, well i think maybe a he anyway altho dont hold me to that
has he got any white spots on his dorsal fin? maybe you can see on the black splodge
i got one that colour a month ago it was less than an inch long awwww, getting nearer 2 inches now bless , dont they grow up fast LOL
i agree with you on the character, ive never had a fish before that reacts to humans as much as they do
freak my husband out a bit when hes working on the tank as they like to feel at our hands with there barbels and hes a tad nervous of them
even when your hands arnt actually in the water they like to come up and have a feel
mine are clari and horace (hungry horace) i dont usually name fish unless its a descriptive name that sticks ,like my Anaspidoglanis macrostoma (little stripey altho not so little nowadays)
but the clarias have such big personalities
the new spotted one so far is called tiddler until something else comes along
On sexing Clarias, the male has a genital papilla sticking out near the anus, the female doesn't. See picture in this link on African Clarias, should be similar in C. batrachus:
But the fish is lovely and if he wont come down on price i may have to pay it,What do they normally go for then ?
