PlanetCatfish.com

Is a Frogmouth Catfish a good starter catfish?

Nope. It's sensitive to water conditions and needs live food (although it can be weaned off live food with some difficulty). More suitable for the experienced aquarist.

What is a good starter catfish? I really want a catfish with the size of a frogmouth.

Do you mean a starter catfish with a large, wide mouth (like a frogmouth), or one that grows to the size of a frogmouth (about 9")? Catfishes with a large gape are largely best kept by experienced aquarists.

The size of a frogmouth.

What about ?

Silurus,

Would the difficulty in keeping "anything with really big mouth" be related to their eating habits, and the fact that they gorge themselves relatively infrequently and then not eating at all, perhaps also causing big spikes in ammonia?

I can also foresee that they are a bit difficult to feed, take only live food, perhaps?

Or is there some other reason?

I take there's a reasona aside from the obvious "most beginners like to have more than one fish in the tank".

--
Mats

Chaca only feeds on live fishes and rarely accepts anything else than live fish.

maybe if you try really hard and get really lucky, they accept the odd earthworm or prawn, but then you're still feeding live fishes.

And -there are several posts and articles on this one- Chaca has the tendency to alter the pH in the tank pretty serious; for some reason not entirely clear it can cause the pH to drop, and I don't mean just 1......

so the tankwater needs to be buffered pretty good.

another difficulty in feeding live fish over a longer time are the dangers with parasites. several very nasty species of gutworms have a cycle wich ends with massive amounts of worms living in the gut -and killing it- of the top-predator in the tank.....

To avoid this, you should set up a 'clean' strain of feeders, for example Convicts or Jewels. guppies breed too slow, and they're small, not enough meat to feed an adult Chaca.

So to keep 1 or 2 Chaca's in good health, you need at least 2 tanks; 1 to keep them; 1 to breed Convicts in large numbers (actually quite easy to pull off).

All this together doesn't make up for a "beginners-cat" at all.

Frogmouth, if you like a 5-9" catfish that can swallow some prey, but also accepts frozen food, pellets, earthworms, prawns and the like; there are a few species suitable.
as mentioned: Chrysichthys ornatus would make a very fine fish. not fragile, pretty, carnivorous, but not overly, not agressive.

both Auchenipterichthys species are nice too. not exactly fish-eaters (although adults can and will eat guppy-sized fish), but secretive and unusual, a bit "sharklike" when they swim.
Trachelyopterus looks like a piece of wood with a mouth up front and a tail on the other end. similar-sized and not difficult to care for either (they're gluttons when feedingtime arrives). these CAN hide however.....for months at a time!

The Black Lancer is another 8-9" weirdo, suitable. not carnivorous, but very very weirdlooking

the Dwarf Giraffenose Cat is THE 8" earthremoval-system, and can be combined with any of the above, if your tank's big enough. good for cleaning up smaller foodparticles the carnivores ignore and tough as an old boot besides! a great catfish to keep.

If you get a fairly sized tank, this almost 10" extremely awesome critter might be something for your taste...it feeds on ANYTHING it can swallow: Pseudopimelodus bufonius
the slightly smaller Batrachoglanis raninus looks like the evil brother of the small bumblebee-cat. it too has a voracious taste, but apart from that, it's pretty docile and not hard to keep. this one shows up on occasion in the trade, it's not that rare.

the list goes on and on.......

Thanks alot that really helped me.