MY 40 &55G TANKS

MIKE · Post by **MIKE** » 31 May 2006, 02:28

right now i have a 55g and a 40g.in my 55gi have a spotted gar(baby)2 oscars(baby) and a catfish i have no clue what kind when i get a pic ill post.in my 40g i have a african clawed frog,red tail catfish(baby),1 bicher eel(baby),1tiretrack eel(baby) and 3snails. i only see my frog,bicher eel & my red tail catfish.i know my tanks are kinda crowded but im planing on geting a 200g tank

should i putthe spotted gar and the red tail catfish in the 200g tank alone when i get it.and what kind hidding places for my eel and catfish should i get.wood,plastic or stone.

kdawg · Post by **kdawg** » 31 May 2006, 02:48

sounds like you got some nice fish i dont know a lot but i can tell you that your red tail cat is going to get huge and i know from experiance your oscars are going to get big. i had an oscar that a fellow pratically gave to me then i found out why he did it. i put two med. size bala sharks in with him (they were like 4 inches) and he ate them.

then he tore up all my plants and kept eating the lettece i put in the tank for my pleco. he stayed for about one week before i traded him in for 5 bucks in store credit. i was happy to get it

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 31 May 2006, 10:58

Sorry to be a bit of a pain, but a Red-tailed Catfish (at leas if it's the Southamerican version, which is quite likely), it has the potential to grow to 5 feet/150cm. A 200g tank is far from sufficient for this this, you're looking at soemthing in the order of a few thousand gallon (one rough estimate is to go for a tank that is 4L x 2L x 1.5L (L x W x H), where L is the length of the fish. If you use the 5 feet for this calculation, you get a "tank" that is 20 x 10 x 7.5 feet, which would be 11175 gallon... Give or take a bit...

These fish ARE NOT suitable for any home aquarium - only if you are REALLY RICH and can afford setting up an "indoor swimming pool" that is of decent dimensions, you could possibly entertain ideas of such a fish.

If you act now, whilst it's still small, you may be able to take it back to the shop and get rid of it that. Once it reaches 2 feet or so (and becomes completely unsuitable for any standard aquarium, 200g or otherwise), it's much harder to find it a good home, as most public aquaria, zoos, etc usually have a fair number of rescued large catfish already...

For the other fish, I guess a 200g tank would be suitable...

As to advice on gars, eels and others, I can't really tell, as I have no good knowledge of these fish (this is after all Planet Catfish!). There may be others that could