PlanetCatfish.com

I really want one of these guys and i now have a chance to get one,are they ok with tankmates or is there no chance,theres 2 tanks that i have set up now that he can go in,

one is a 108G(2oscars,JD,raphial cat,and a pleco)

the other tank is a 90G that just has a claris cat in there but i will be gettin another claris soon

which tank if any would be best suited for him

Bagrus is an African genus and there is no such species as B. bagrus. I have kept a young B. bajad successfully with a young Silurus asotus in the past. I got rid of both fishes long before either one of them outgrew the tank and each other, though.

When full grown, Bagrus should not be kept with any tankmates (it'd need a pretty big tank anyway).

I think he means .

See this: http://www.scotcat.com/factsheets/b_bagarius.htm .

This will be a tough fish to keep long-term. Plus, it will eat your other fish as it grows. If you do get it, keep it in a large, well-filtered tank by itself.

Mod edit: Added space betweem htm and . to make the link work correctly. -- Mats

in the cat-elog it says they only get to 7.5"

and i misspeled the name, ,I meant BAGARIUS BAGARIUS

It may well be true, as some ichthyologists claim, that Bagarius bagarius only gets to 7", but all Bagarius species look pretty similar and AFAIK the fish that enter the trade from India are Bagarius yarelli, which grows to > 6 feet. In short, you could get very lucky and get a Bagarius that maxes out at 7", but that's highly unlikely.

I looked at the Cat-eLog entries for B. bagarius and B. yarelli, and the identification keys aren't exactly splendid on these two species - it says that B. bagarus is "Smalles of the genus" and B. yarelli is "Largest of the genus". This is hardly useful if you have a small specimen in a shop to try to determine which of the two it is...

Does any of you that know more about these fish have a good handle on how to determine which species is which, aside from "adult size"?

There's a post here by Silurus that implies that B. bagarius is the proper name of B. yarelli...

--
Mats

Do you know where your Bagarius will come from? Only one of the three Indochinese species stays small. If your Bagarius comes from India, it will not stay small. If it comes from Thailand, there is a one in two chance it will stay small (the third species, B. suchus is distinctive enough that it is not confused with the other two).
The small Indochinese species is often identified as B. bagarius, but is much more likely to be without a formal name.

Now I'm getting confused... Are there not two Bagarius -- B bagarius and B yarelli -- from India? Are we now saying that B bagarius is no longer a valid name? (If so, why? Shouldn't it have precedence over say B yarelli?) Or does the Indian B bagarius get large and the SEA so-called "B bagarius" stay small?

The Catelog pic of B bagarius is obviously an Indian fish. Is that pic mis-identified?

What about MatsP's question about a hobbyist-friendly guide to distinguishing these fish visually -- a sort of "Dummy's Guide to Identifying Bagarius Species"? (Me first dummy that needs this guide!)

Roberts asserts that there is a large and a small species in India (corresponding to B. yarrelli and B. bagarius respectively), but my studies indicate that there is only one (or more than one) large species in India.
There is the Indochinese â??B. bagariusâ?