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Electric catfish tankmates ? Possible or not ?

I know tankmates are not recomended with electric catfish but have heard of few that keep them with African cicilids without problems.
My electric cat is small, ca. 8 cm and it would be nice if I could kep him with small klown and black ghost knives and Senegalus.
Anyone tryed those or other fish for tankmates ?

Electric catfish are blacklisted in my country, so we can't keep them here.

I am very interested in them, I would recommend putting the biggest fish you can with it, although I am expecting the catfish to eat whatever goes in with him ...

Rocks, wood and even tacky plastic ornaments all make good tankmates for electric catfish, other fish do not.

Any fish small enough to be eaten will be, and e cats have suprisingly large mouths. Any fish seen as a threat and too large to eat will be unceramoniously electrocuted and left bent and twitching on the substrate floor eventually.

I have an 18" Malapterus microstoma (small electric catfish)and have been shocked a couple of times, at 18" it isnt a nice experience to be zapped, for a fish it would be fatal.

This is one for the speciestank and then one for the solo tank as well.

as said; it'll kill anything else you put in there, regardless of size.

i can remember a long time ago Marc keeping one; it was about 8" big or so and it already carried a powerful zap (it got me zapped repeatedly when I carried the wet bag). once it settled in a tank it killed a foot long Clarias batrachus within the next 24 hours or so!
Clarias batrachus is not exactly what I'd call a "fragile fish"; not even by a mile stretch of imagination......

I've handled a few more since then -in LFS stores- all small but all really nasty too.

so in short: NO tankmates, none whatsoever. they really will have no chance at all of surviving.

sidguppy wrote:This is one for the speciestank and then one for the solo tank as well.

as said; it'll kill anything else you put in there, regardless of size.

i can remember a long time ago Marc keeping one; it was about 8" big or so and it already carried a powerful zap (it got me zapped repeatedly when I carried the wet bag). once it settled in a tank it killed a foot long Clarias batrachus within the next 24 hours or so!
Clarias batrachus is not exactly what I'd call a "fragile fish"; not even by a mile stretch of imagination......

I've handled a few more since then -in LFS stores- all small but all really nasty too.

so in short: NO tankmates, none whatsoever. they really will have no chance at all of surviving.

This is also what I always thought, based on past experience with electric catfish, but I've had a 10 cm electric catfish in with an equally large Steatocranus casuaris in a 40 gal "pariah" tank for the last 6 months, and the Steato is doing fine. The e-cat doesn't go out of its way to zap the Steato, the Steato moves out of the way when the e-cat comes by, and though it gets zapped once in a while, the results are far from fatal. I had a large Pseudomystus siamensis in there with these two fish, but it would go absolutely catatonic when zapped, and it is now elsewhere. Having enough room may be the key. Obviously, e-cats DO share their habitats with other fish in the wild.

Also, I'm surprised that Sid would consider e-cats "nasty". Sure they defend themselves, and it startles, but IME, you have to provoke them into zapping you.

Thanks Dinyar,
this was my thougt, I would like to hear from others who have tryed their electric catfisf with some tankmates with good results or bad.

I remember reading somewhere that most synodontis cats are imune (insulated?) to electric shock produced by malapterurus. I have experimented and succeeded in keeping an electricus with eupterus of a slightly smaller size, as well as a trio of bite sized lace cats. All faired just fined together and I have never seen any fish show signs of discomfort. In fact, lacers often "cuddled" with a much larger e-cat. It seemed that they would purposely cram themselves in the same cave.

Unfortunately I needed to free up some tankspace and got rid of electric cat when he was approximately 10" in lenght

Years ago, I found an unlabeled baby electric cat in a department store pet section. It was sold to me as a pleco, for $2.49. I had a 55 full of African cichlids, and thought they might get along if they grew up together, particularly since the catfish was only about 2". The next day, one cichlid was dead, another was dying, and a third was stunned. It didn't die immediately, but was never quite right afterwards, and wasted away gradually.
The cat was moved into a 20 long of its own. I was curious about how much charge a small one would produce, so I picked it up. I've felt a worse shock from "tasting" a 9-volt battery, to determine how much life was left in it.
A few weeks or so later, I gave the cat to a friend with a 6' tank. The residents were 3 grown oscars, and a Pacu the size of a dinner plate. The cat was about the size of my thumb, and the largest oscar though it was a feeder. The oscar got within about 1" of the cat, then abruptly turned away. It tried once more with the same result; the second largest oscar only needed one time to learn the lesson. The third oscar never even bothered, and the Pacu seemed terrified of the little catfish from the start.
It was a funny sight, a few days later, to see all the huge fish keeping as far away from the little catfish as possible. Wherever it swam, they were on the opposite side or end of the tank at all times.

A had a pike cichlid which after years of living peacefully with its tankmates in a 200g tank decided to go on a homicidal rampage, at the time the only other tank i had which was large enough to move the pike into was the 55 that housed my electric cat which at the time was probably around 10 inches long, the fish stores around here dont take in aggressive/predatory fish so i was pretty much stuck with the pike in the short term.

The pike went in and the cat went up to have a look at what the new addition was, both fish were around the same size. The pike being a bit stunned at its sudden change of surroundings was trying to get up behind the filter and was totally ignoring the cat. Then from no where the pike did half a dozen cartwheels across the tank, dropped to the substrate and lay their with its spine arched and its whole body in spasms, the cat then went over and tried from several angles to suck the pike into its mouth, despite it being clearly too large to swallow. I removed the pike and placed it into a small tank to recover but it never did and died during the night.

The e cat is now around 18 inches and the last time it caught me a with a shock (it hates me moving anything in the tank, touch its "stuff" and you get zapped)it caused my legs to buckle, sitting me firmly on my backside and causing me to bite my tounge hard enough for it to bleed, not a fish to be messed with.

Different fish may have different personalities, and my e cat is a different species to the commonly traded ones but none the less should the cat decide it doesnt like something in the tank the result will not be pleasent, and besides that they do make great "pet" fish so a single specimin species tank is the best way to keep them.

it probably won't help as the previous post was 6 years ago.....

A few years ago i had a large electric eel and put in an electric catfish in the tank.they had no problems for many years together

I agree with a previous post (2006) I have a Electric cat (22 cm) with some Synodontis eupterus/ nigreventis/angelicus and they seems to no not bother about the
electric shocks even though they squeeze some times when the got chasen away competing for food.

I kept my little 1.5" one several years ago with a small convict cichlid. He shocked the convict and the fish was disabled.
The convict could only swim on its side like a flounder, however he lived just fine and fed ordnarily with other cichlids.

In hindsight I should have tried keeping him with something a little less confrontational. things that tend to stay out of the way of other fish would be a good bet. Mine didn't grow at all in over 2 months eating blood worms every day, I'm not sure why because I've seen some pretty big ones for sale here in the city

Reteos wrote: ↑05 Mar 2017, 05:01Mine didn't grow at all in over 2 months eating blood worms every day, I'm not sure why because I've seen some pretty big ones for sale here in the city

In our short (and small-sample) feeding trial we found that we could leave the amount of bloodworms fed to the electric catfish out of the dataset entirely without altering the conclusions. Of all the foods fed this had the least impact on body weight gain. Now, we were using frozen bloodworms and I suspect a lot of that weight was actually water, but there may also be an assimilation efficiency issue.

Malapterus Electricus is extremely successful in it's quest for food. In the wild fish that are too large to eat are shocked anyways. The catfish will swim underneath and jolt them good. This usually results in regurgitation. Then the catfish being a gross catfish can make a meal out of ANY fish despite size difference. They literally beat up larger fish for lunch money. The release of their "jolt" is voluntary so it is possible in a larger to tank to theoretically house with others if you don't mind them possibly dying horribly if your catfish decides it's time for them to die horribly.