PlanetCatfish.com

I just finished reading this, and must say congrats on getting your fish to eat, and out of harm's way. I think now it's time to upgrade your tank larger(55 is still way too small) You're looking for a deeper footprint from front to back than a 55 gal. Otherwise you are basically giving it an extended 10 gal. 10 gals, and 55 gals are 12" from front to back. Your fish can grow to 18" or larger. I've seen one at 22", and I personally own three, one of which is currently 16.5" at 2.5 years old. I'll post a pic of what you can expect in your future if you do right by this fish. I'd say that you'll need to initially upgrade to at least 75 gals(4' x 18"), but you'll need to eventually get him into something larger than that. Once my 4000 gal tank is completed and the current residents of my 350 gal tropical pond are moved there I'm moving my limas into that pond so that I can see them to their full potiential, and hopefully breed them. Good luck with your's and these are one of my favorite catfish. They become quite tame at a large size, and if you try enough you can eventually hand feed them. Don't be alarmed if they shed their slime coat. If you turn on the lights too sudden it could be stressfull enough for them to do this. My big one is active all the time and rarely takes a vertical stance anymore. My second largest is a few months older than the big one, but is approaching 13" itself. My third is still a baby at 7" like your's though. Enjoy the pics, and good luck with your's. Oh, and on feeding I've yet to see a lima that could refuse blood worms. Just don't put feeders in for 5-10 days. Then throw a chunk of frozen bloodworms in, and see what happens. The little guys can't refuse. Could take as much as 2 weeks to get them off live, but it's well worth it.

I had three but now only one is still alive. One juvenile got totally hollow in a matter of two weeks. It ate well and seemed to be in perfect condition but suddenly it just got weak and died - despite actually eating till the end. The water was fine and no other fish in the tank showed any signs of being sick or having a hard time. The other one was an older companion to the one in the photo below. It didn't make it through a heavy Oodinium attack following a stupid plant purchase from a store (never again plants from a tank with other fishes).

The eye is cloudy on the photo but that's better now. It also sports a slightly bent nose tip but that was from before I got it. Earthworms are its favorite food. It goes for them so hastily that the first worms allways gets thrown out past the gills. It as to suck them in two or three times before they go down the right way - or it's just a way of making the worms a bit more "weak" before swalloving - I don't know.

It's at the moment very close to 23 cm and has grown extremely slow the last five years. This makes me want to ask about your experience about growth and sizes of your Sorubims. Various Sorubim info sheets also shows a great variety regarding size of a fully grown Showel nose.

Hi all.

I have two of these terrific fish.
Had mine about 4 yrs I think.
They started off as skittish 3" baby's & are now 12-14" beauty's.

I would say that their growth rates are relatively slow, certainly in relation to other large Pims anyway (Redtails, Tigershovels etc)
Not convinced on what their full potential size will be as you read conflicting advice but have seen a stunning specimen of nearly 2 foot (24") although it may have been a Hybrid - couldnt get near enough to see as it was in a public aquarium & had a crowd around it - It dont' do crowds!

Mine are housed in an 8' x 2.5' x2.5' Tank which is approx 310 gallons (???)
Substrate is about 2" of fine Silver sand & the Decor is 3 -4 very large pieces of Bogwood.
I fine this helps to slighty soften the water & keeps the Ph around 6.5 - 7.2.
Tank is heated to approx 76 - 82 degrees (depends on time of year as they are in an outdoor fishhouse)
Filtration is a large 4 foot sump & returns pump, which also has some bags of aquarium Peat pellets to maintain the PH. 30% water changes are carried out every 8-14 Days, although the water is monitored for NH3 & NH4 spikes especially after feeding. Mine are fed twice a week, once on sinking catfish pellets, Carnivore pellets & High Protein Sterlet pellets & the other occasion on large defrosted , washed Prawns plus pices of whitefish.
Looking forward to seeing how large i can get these fish.

Sometimes I wonder if we are all actually keeping Sorubim Lima.

There appear to be five species of sorubim and all look pretty similar but sizes of the different species range from 25cm TL upto 80cm TL

This is a really good paper to read if you like these fish.

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2007f/zt01422p029.pdf

Sorubim cuspicaudus which is the largest species at 80cm TL can be determined by its having a forked tail with two straight lobes whereas all the rest of the species which are between 25cm and 50cm TL have a rounded bottom lobe. There is a good illustration in the paper (page 6) that shows it probably a lot better then my description.

It would be interesting to know if people have larger ones if they are actually S. cuspicaudus.

TP wrote:Sometimes I wonder if we are all actually keeping Sorubim Lima.

My thoughts exactly.

However, in regards to some of the smaller sizes of some other species, just because they didn't find any specimens larger doesn't mean they don't get larger. Sizes reported are maximum length known from a specimen, which is not necessarily the largest an individual of a species can reach, especially in captivity.

Some of the specimens that people have may actually be S. elongatus; the publication linked notes that they are common in the trade.

TP wrote:Sometimes I wonder if we are all actually keeping Sorubim Lima.

There appear to be five species of sorubim and all look pretty similar but sizes of the different species range from 25cm TL upto 80cm TL

This is a really good paper to read if you like these fish.

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2007f/zt01422p029.pdf

Sorubim cuspicaudus which is the largest species at 80cm TL can be determined by its having a forked tail with two straight lobes whereas all the rest of the species which are between 25cm and 50cm TL have a rounded bottom lobe. There is a good illustration in the paper (page 6) that shows it probably a lot better then my description.

It would be interesting to know if people have larger ones if they are actually S. cuspicaudus.

So it was time to count some fin rays... Can't see more than 7 rays on the pectoral fins and lima should have 9. Elongatus have 8.
OK. That means that I probably can't se well enough to count properly. Question remains. Am I missing one or two rays? Number of anal fin rays however hints that it's lima and not elongatus. Those where counted from a photo and much more reliable than trying to see anything at a fish constantly moving about.
The other species are however ruled out and I assume it's lima I've got - rather than elongatus.

At last.
"My" LFS has gotten Sorubims again. For quite some time now they haven't had them on their lists and they seemed hard to get around here.
I'm going there on friday to pick them up.

I ordered two a couple of weeks ago. They where both in miserable condition at arrival in the store. One died of Ich before I even got there and the other one was skinny and had no barbels left - almost no fins either. I didn't buy it.
Could have taken it for free and tried out in a qt but the wanted to keep it and hoped to cure it them selves.

But new fishes arrived there today. Hope they're in good shape. Also excited to see if they are limas or one of the other species.

They can be very nervous and if frightened will crash into the glass breaking that lovely snout.
Try not to stamp around them.
j

jscoggs27 wrote:They can be very nervous and if frightened will crash into the glass breaking that lovely snout.
Try not to stamp around them.
j

Thanks for concerning. It's well worth mentioning.
I've had them for six or seven years. The one I still have actually has got a slightly - though barely noticable - downwards bent tip of the snout.

When stressed it looks prone to get sore fins for some reason. I just changed a third of the tank water and now it has red markings on the caudal fin. Luckily it doesn't crash around like nuts. It's actually quite cool for a Sorubim.

The new ones were smaller than mentioned by the LFS. They are about 7 cm and I felt like taking a risk putting them together with the older one. Anyway he/she hasn't touched (and still doesn't) much smaller tetras either so I took the risk. After the first night they directly started to share space together with the big one in its favorite place.

The small ones have a lot of cropped barbels at the moment but they seem to slowly gain length again. LFS blamed a tank mate for that pruning.

Ok,
I am needing some help here. I have had my Lima for 3 years now purchased him at about 6" since he has sprouted to 12.5" maybe 13 he is housed in a 75 gallon tank with a few african cichlids they eat frozen bloodworms once a day and flakes or pellets at night. My lima has not visably ingested any thing for 3 or so weeks he maybe sifting at night really dont know? Twice now I have picked up some live (ghost shrimp or guppies) did not see him take on any. tried worms, veggies and the wife is in the yard right now looking for some crickets. he still is very active but looking thinner then his big bellied self, he is a loner in the tank as far as Limas are concerened. All tank chemistry is normal with regular water changes. Looking for suggestions on how to handle this.
Thanks,

Robert

Can you post the actual values of nitrate, nitrite and ammonia. Different people have different opinions about what is "normal" or "fine" - and different types of fish have different sensitivity to these chemicals. A fairly common sign of "water has gone bad" is that the fish stops eating - particularly in larger pimelodids.

I wouldn't worry too much aside from the fact that from what you describe, the fish as stopped suddenly.

--
Mats

The first ones reacting to water quality going bad in my tanks has always been the Sorubims.
And, as Mats points out, it's quite common that they (or pimelodids) don't eat then - at least that's my experience.

But I've also noticed that they can have periods when not eating and without me finding a good reason why.
Just one in a group refuses to eat while the others are as hungry as normal. Then some weeks later the "starving" is taken care of by another in the group.
That kind of eating refusal seems to happen more seldom when they are regulary given a lot of different food options.
- But again - I'm just talking about how I experience my fish. Don't put any heavy science into it.

Three weeks is still not alarming but it do indeed indicate that something's not quite right.
It is probably a bit more worrying if it hasn't had these eating refusals before.

I will be testing the water this weekend, and will post results then. This is not the first time that he has given up on eating, but it is the longest period. I was over feeding him for awhile though, occassionally I would just show him the jar of freeze dried krill and he would get into his normal horizontal position with beak at the top of the tank and he would just nab it up. He still gets upright but just wont lunge at it. I will see what happens in the next couple of days.
Thanks Again!!!

Robert

Just another photo.
One of three youngsters.
About 11 cm.

Shovelnoses like many fish have different personalities. Some will be out and about all the time, some won't move much at all till night. Eventually after putting several in a tank together the less active ones did become more active. They like hiding in long tall Val type plants. Make sure you have a background. I wouldn't even consider a 10 gallon as a quarentine tank for a shovelnose. Everyone always says they plan on getting a bigger tank for there fish but most don't soon enough. Why not buy the tank before the fish. I never figured out why people had to have the fish that grows big before they had the big tank. Its like buying a sheep dog for an apartment but promising to buy a house before it gets too big. IMO

I am getting ready to move and need some suggestions on moving my 75 gallon tank, currently in the tank are 12.5 Sorbium, 8"lepurinus, 5"red devil a pearl zebra and a sodonatis. I fell like bucketing the fish would be very disturbing, but with even draining 1/2 the tank removing decorations it would still be around 300lb water plus the tank itself and the sand gravel mix. Anyone have any suggestions on how to make this a easy as possible???

It would certainly NOT be a good thing to try to move the tank with water in it - a 75g tank is difficult enough to move without water - I just moved a tank that is about 100g, and it was hard enough when we emptied it completely, and a 75g tank is almost the same size/weight - it is only a little bit shorter than my 5ft tank [see also below].

The tank itself, if we assume 10mm glass would weigh about 60kg/133lbs.

To best answer how you should go about moving the fish, we'd need to know:
How far are you moving [in travel-time]?
Do you have immediate access to new home?
Do you have to move everything else at the same time?
Are you using a removals firm, or doing the "rent a van, invite a few friends with promise of pizza and beer after"?
What sort of vehicle do you have?
Is the new tap-water same/similar to the old tap-water?

I just moved 5 tanks in one move (total volume about 200 gallon), and due to a stupid mistake [and lack of water changing] I lost a few of the fish (three, to be precise), but still only a small number in the whole scheme of things.

--
Mats

Moving day will be in September sometime, property is 10 miles from where I am currently. I plan to rent a larger size uhaul truck and the tank will be the last to go, as for as the tap water at the new residence we are in the same county and all the water comes from the same source. There will be no pro's doing the moving, just the family and friends. But they all now what the tank and fish mean to me so I don't think they will be reckless. So what do you think?

I didn't mean to imply that friends/family are worse than commercial movers - it helps, because they know what's going on and can be told "you do this, I do that", where professionals can be more stubborn...

I'd get a couple of coolers (the type of thing you take cold drinks when going to a pic-nic or some such) to keep the fish nice and comfy - it's better than buckets because it keeps the temeperature the same for the fish.

You'll also need buckets for decorations, gravel and such things - the tank is heavy enough to not have many pounds of gravel, decorations and such.

A large container to take at least some of the original water. I use plastic waste-bins, but other large "buckets" will do fine too.

Having a relatively large diameter hose that you can use to empty the water with is always a good plan - the usual 1/2" garden-hose does add extra time.

If at all possible, I'd try to move the fish & tank in a separate move, just to make sure you have plenty of time to deal with that [but I understand that sometimes you have to hand over the keys for the old place when you move out, and get the new place on the same day].

Get most of the water out of the tank before getting to catching the fish - and get all the decorations out too.

If possible, put the filter on the fish-holding cooler/bucket - that keeps the filter going for as long as possible, and switch it off just before you move the fish into the truck.

--
Mats

Thanks, it all sounds reletivly easy. Should I keep the lids on the coolers closed?
i have a lepurinus Fas. that likes to jump if he could get the chance to.

Robert

Yeah, lid down - it also means it's going to be dark and the fish are often more calm that way.

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Mats