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i have just purchased a red tailed cat fish. i wonder if anyone could provide me with any information on feeding and keeping these wonderfull giants as i am finding it impossible to find any books on the subject.thanks for any info sidewinder

What kind of redtail are we talking about here. South American or Asian?

Silurus wrote:What kind of redtail are we talking about here. South American or Asian?

i dont know what is the differance between the two. he is about 2 foot long with a marbled head white belly and red tail and red tinge on the dorsal fin

OMG that is a beautiful fish, you have an asian red tail, ehm i dont know much on the fish either but just wanted to say that is an amazing fish, costs us $80 down here, how much did you pay

he is about 2 foot long with a marbled head white belly and red tail and red tinge on the dorsal fin

Actually, this sounds more like a South American redtail. More info here.

does the head of it look bluish with some dark spots on it?

better get a big tank.....



this one's about 4 feet.....

Or a large heated pond even.
Is it true they could take youâ??re hand off if they tried?

I have one for sale if anyone interested.$20 so far it up on aquabid

Well. . good luck. . there´s one in my local petshop. They couldn´t find a buyer for him, so now he´s REALLY big - about a meter or so. .but nevertheless: cool fish!

Yeah I know. I have tried every where and guess what... I still have him in a tank along with my big pleco and a ray

ian slatter wrote:i have just purchased a red tailed cat fish. i wonder if anyone could provide me with any information on feeding and keeping these wonderfull giants as i am finding it impossible to find any books on the subject.thanks for any info sidewinder

Hey!!! My name is Alicia...I absolutely love these gentle giants!!! I have had my Red Tailed Catfish for about a year now...I found him at a small little asian fish store for about 20$$....he was maybe 2 1/2 inches long or so...he is now over a foot long!!! As much as I love my catfish, I have to find a good home for him because he is now trying to eat all the other fish in our tank... And I love those fish just as much...So if ne one has a great home for him please let me know!!! Sorry about his whole life story...ha ha ha but what you need to do is literally devote your tank to him if you would like to keep him happy and healthy and I agree you might even want to create a simple pond for him. They eat A LOT!!!! Mine mainly eats feeder fish but I try to mix it up a little bit with blood worms and earth worms....all sorts of stuff....they eat just about ne thing... Hmmm....so you just want to give them a nice variety and make sure you dont over feed them b/c they WILL NOT STOP EATING NO MATTER WHAT!!! And that could eventually kill them...they dont know when to stop and are constantly hungry!!! We feed ours maybe 50 feeders once a week (we have a clown knife & green terror who also eat the feeders) and the about every other day we throw some worms in there...but it never fails he will eat everything!!! Well I hope I helped you a little bit if ne thing else come to me I will let you know or if you have ne ?'s please ask me!!! Goodluck Thnx

i have had my red tail for about 6 months now and i feed him a mixture of shrimp that i get at my local store, the little ones that you get in a pack already cooked for human consumption they are about $2-$4 per pack he also gets a lot of earth worms just pick them up in my yard and he gets gold fish (around fifty or so every few weeks) i also give him some pellets on occasion, i also give him beef heart on occasion, i have been told that you can feed them almost anything that they might find in the wild, and just about anything else that they can fit in there mouth, but as a personal oppinion other than the occasional beef heart it is probably wise to keep it as natural as possible. I do know through a family member by experience if you feed them a diet consisting of man made food such as a sinking pellet on a regular basis and then start feedig them on a regular basis with high protein food such as gold fish then they may have a hard time digesting it, and it may cause them to bloat up and maby even get sick from it.

A couple of points:
In the wild this fish is more likely to be found with fruit in it's stomach than fish. They are omnivours. You should be feeding them as such. Yes, they will snack on just about anything they catch, fish, frogs, turtles, crabs, shrimp, wabbits , joke! etc., etc.

Try mixing in some sweet potato, zuchinni (courgettes for the UK), cucumber, grapes/raisins, figs any other fruit/vegetable you can think of in addition to more meaty foods. It'll be better for the fish in the long haul.

IMHO: I personally do not think they should be sold as an aquarium fish. They grow far too large for nearly everyone who ever bought one. And yet, LFS sell thousands of them a year. If you are prepared and committed to the challenge of keeping one in suitable accomodations, that's great. Otherwise, that little 2 inch "cutie" will grow very quickly to be a real pain in the @$$, or will suffer and die in too small of quarters.

Sincerely,
Paul E. Turley

One last bit of advise, get a microscope and do a squash mount (40x will do) of the intestines of one of the next batch of goldfish/rosy reds/whatever. Then decide if you want to keep feeding live feeder fish.

other veggies and fruits that can be used with no problems (I once had two big fat Pterodoras, so it's a tested scenario):
-kiwi!!
-grapes, both green and blue
-red and black berries; some fish don't like them, they might be too sour.
-raspberry and the ones from the Bramble (the black ones; English name?)
-strawberry
-peas from the freeze NOT from the tincan (too slimy)
-spinache from the freeze
-peach parts and nectarine parts
-slices of melon without the skin
-green coliflower
-broccoli, cook it for only 1 minute so it softens a wqee bit and sinks; the stem can be used too, just slice it.
-Mango!!
-any other tropical rainforest fruit without the peel, like lichees etc

Overripe fruit is much better than when it's so fresh that it's still "hard"; this makes sense as those fish will pick fruits that -obvious- have already ripened to the point that they fell out of the trees....

Red Tails love this, but it will please any big Dorad too (esp Pterodoras, Platydoras, Pseudodoras and Megalodoras), as well as any big Pleco (Panaque, Liposarcus, Glyptopterichthys, Acanthicus, Pseudacanthicus etc), or Callichthyd (Hoplo's, Megalechis). Most other big Pims probably eat less fruit (Tigershovelnose, Leiarus) although it still might be worth trying....

I also have a new red tail catfish, about 12" long and have a few questions about feeding. I'm going to stop feeding him live goldfish feeders as recomended to aviod disease, but it was suggested to feed him frozen silversides in their place. Is this a good idea? Also, I need a better idea of how often to feed him, I am used to my Cichlids that will stop eating when they're full, but I've put 12 feeders in one day and he ate all but 3 of them (I also have a foot long Arowana [sp?] in there with him) and has been eating about 6 a day every day since (i put in 8, he usually gets aobut 5 or 6 and the Arowana gets the rest) Is this too much for him or the Arowana? He also eats quite a bit of the pellet food I feed to my Jack Dempsy as well every day.

Or a simpler question . . . What should I feed him and how often? I've had bad experiences with vegetables badily clouding the water in my other tank so I'm kind of hesitant to use them.

. . . and if anyone knows, that same question for my Arowana, I dont want to keep feeding feeders to him and risk disease, but he dosent eat the silversides?

and why is it starring out the middle when I put in cichlids?? ( C I C H L I D S ) Is that a bad word to use on a catfish forum

Is this too much for him or the Arowana?

Short answer: yes. The fish don't eat like that in the wild (i.e. they do not necessarily eat so much at each meal and even eat at all every day), so it is a good idea to periodically starve your fish for a day or two (or even longer). This would: (a) decrease the number of water changes needed due to less waste being produced; (b) burn less of a hole in your pocket now that the same amount of food can last longer and (c) makes for more healthy fish (less prone to obesity).
As for alternative foods, you might want to try pelleted foods like Hikari Carnivore Pellets for the catfish and Hikari Food Sticks for the arowana.

BlackLight wrote:I also have a new red tail catfish, about 12" long and have a few questions about feeding.

How big's the aquarium?

I was told it's a 110, but the dimensions are the same as a 125 I believe, at least the legnth and width are.

125 foot I hope ?

Believe me, If I could afford it I'd have one

I have another question . . . I have some decorative rocks that are just small enough to fit in his mouth, I had not seen any info about these fishes (besize their huge size at an aquarium) so I did not know they swallow stuff till yesterday. When I first put in the rocks he would suck on them for a while different ways and then spit them out once he figured they were nothing good. But now that I've read about them eating stuff I'm worried he may have eaten one, I'm not sure because there's a bunch of them in there, so how would I tell?? And I take it I should take all those rocks as well right? I tried overfeeding him to see if he would spit anything out but he just stopped eating and left a few shrip laying around and one sitting in his mouth, guess he's saving that one for later. . .

See this thread.

I did read of a RedTail eating an 8oz crystal paperweight and regurgitating it after 2 weeks.

That thread was more about gravel, I am talking about a 1 1/2 inch decorative rock, that will not go through the intestine. But like I said, I dont even know if he has actually ate one or not, just saw the pictures or a RTC that had eaten a huge rock and it worried me? Is that not normal and the rocks should be fine? I've seen him sucking on them when I first put them in but he always spit them out and has left them alone since (I think). Are they fine or is it likely he'll try to actually swallow one?

I have never seen or heard of any catfish that would eat rocks or gravel, unless they were accidentally ingested while feeding.
That is not to say your fish will not do it, but even if it did, I am quite sure it'll learn not to do it again. RTC are pretty smart fish.

Thanks for the info as usual I didnt think he would, he always seems to spit them out, just that picture of the RTC with that huge quartz in it's belly freaked me out Have a nice night!