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I have a 4ft tank with an under gravel filtration system. Im wondering if I can breed catfish in this tank? If so what would be easy to breed (the bigger the better)

Thanks

First of all, you should be more specific as to the kind of catfish you want to breed.
Secondly, multiple postings of the same message are considered trivial posts. Please see the forum rules about that.

"First of all, you should be more specific as to the kind of catfish you want to breed.
Secondly, multiple postings of the same message are considered trivial posts. Please see the forum rules about that."

Sorry for the multiple posts

Dont know what kind of catfish to breed yet, that was basically the question, if under gravel filter would be suited to breed any kind of catfish and if so what would be simple to breed.

Very simple answer to your question: YES. [1]

[1] More complex answer: It depends on which catfish. [2]

[2] Further longer answer with respect to the complex answer:
Undergravel filter is fine with many fish, cat- or other kinds.
Of course that is conditional on a few things:
- The UGF is adequate for the number of fish you keep. This is of course true for ANY filtration method.
- the fish you're keeping aren't overly interested in digging pits/holes in the substrate - UGF don't work quite as well when all the water is sucked through a small area where the gravel has been dug out...

As there is around 2500 (probably MORE) different species of catfish, ranging in size from less than 2 cm to over 4 meters, and a wide variety of behaviour and needs, it wouldn't be easy to say if your tank is suitable for keeping/breeding catfish in general.

If I were to suggest something, then I'd say that Corydoras (or closely related) species would be more suitable than many others - several of the Corydoras species are quite easy to breed - particularly well-known for easiness are: and , as well as the dwarf species, e.g. .

You could almost certainly also breed bristlenoses, like Common Bristlenose .

Other species are certainly possible to breed in such a tank too - a lot of it comes down to what you want to keep - and of course what other fish you have in the tank (or will have).

Having said that, there's also quite a few species of catfish that requires quite a bit of water movement, and if you haven't got a very strong current from a powerhead on the UGF, that would be a limiting factor of the number of species that you could keep/breed.

As Silurus said, you need to be more specific about which type of catfish you want to keep before we can recommend anything that you could breed. Specifics about what else is in the tank, your water parameters (probably soft as you're up in bonnie Scotland), and whether you want to keep the tank with lots of plants or not would be useful information. This will help you getting help from us here at planet catfish...

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Mats

I have just bought a new tank to keep my tiger shovelnose catfish and red tailed cat in so the old one is just laying around. I thought I would use it to breed catfish, I am thinking that I will try the bristlenose catfish and also cory's, they will be the only fish in the tank. thanks for your post.

have just bought a new tank to keep my tiger shovelnose catfish and red tailed cat in so the old one is just laying around. I thought I would use it to breed catfish, I am thinking that I will try the bristlenose catfish and also cory's, they will be the only fish in the tank. thanks for your post.

Just a thought since I haven't started breeding Bristlenose yet. From what I have read on this site and forum is that Bristlenose have a fairly large amount of fry and that once you get them to start breeding they dont tend to stop unless seperated. So it is my suggestion that if you want to attempt breeding Bristlenose that you should not venture into the corys until you know the yield you will get from the Bristlenose. Also the Bristlenose create alot of crap and waste.

Again I am not an experienced breeder so maybe someone with experience can confirm if this is a proper assumption.

PhatHead has a point - in fact I would suggest to anyone actively trying to breed anything, that they breed one fish at a time - at least unless you're really sure of what you're doing.

And yes, bristlenoses produce a lot of waste which will need filtering - on the other hand, if you've previously had BIG fish in the tank, the filter should be fine for smaller ones...

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Mats

thanx for all the info