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i have five baby catfish about 1" long that i caught out of the lake this weekend (there were about 60-70 of them schooling in the shallows together) i brought them home and put them in a 10g aquarium and i need to know some basic care... i am not new to fishkeeping and have raised plenty of fish fry but catfish are a new thing to me. My boyfriend guesses that they are probably channel cats but that is purely a guess... they are almost solid black though when i moved them from the 5g bucket they were in to the aquarium they were almost see-through but have since darkened up... i would like to raise these babies in the tank for a while before releasing them into my pond where there is already another cat (mud cat?) and some bream and two turtles.

What should i feed them? I dropped some 1mm NLS pellets that i have for my cichlids in the tank and the babies gobbled them up but I am not sure if this is adaquate for their nutritional needs or not. So any advice y'all can give me would be greatly appreciated. I will take some pics and post them later if anyone would like to take a stab at IDing the babies. Thanks in advance. -Kitty

These are most likely young black bullheads (). Nutrition-wise, commercial fish foods are fine.

here are some quick pics i took of them

Yup, black bullheads.

awesome thanks... how long will they be comfortable in this 10g.. they are in with a male betta (female is in the battered wives rehab tank) the next biggest size tank i can offer would be my 29g planted with angelfish and tetras... i would put them in my 120g african tank but way different tank conditions from what they need... other than that all i have is my pond and i would like to see these babies grow up some first...

I used to catch and keep these Bullheads many times as a kid and even a time or two since as part of a cold water set up.
It is too bad they don't stay small and jet black but they do grow very fast because they will eat anything.
Live red wigglers or pieces of earthworms are a favorite food.
One can grow to six or more inches in one year if you allow them plenty of room.
They do best in a unheated tank with some sheltering caves to hide in during the day. I usually kept a few Pumpkinseed Sunfish with them and a few small to medium sized crayfish.
They can easily reach 9 inches given the space and sometimes the wild fish are caught as large as 12 inches. The record is around four pounds but most run 10 to 14 inches.

Hello,

The others covered everything fairly well. However, I would advise finding a lower protein feed for them. There are no fatal effects that I know of, but most coolwater catfish tend to do better at approximately 20% protein content. I am using data about Ictularus for this recommendation. Don't flame me over it as I am aware that several sub-tropical species actually thrive with higher levels than this.

Larry Vires