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for some of you, you've seen my other post a couple months ago about my catfish that eats everything. well after we found a doctor and the planter was removed, we swore that our catfish found religion. he got calmer, stopped eat things (we also took anything that could fit in his mouth out of the tank). but then the last month he has been ravenous, he darts to the top of the tank nearly jumping out so he can catch the food in my hands and has been pushing the fish away so he can eat it all. well, anyway the other day he found a planter we did not find. it must have been buried deep in the gravel cause we swore we took them all out. but leave it to mr. lee to find it. well he ate it. and its farther down than the last one and i'm pretty sure he will need extensive surgery to remove it. i thought he was gonna be okay, cause he was eating and wasn't acting phased by the planter in his tummy. well our roommates, had a drunken brawl and shut off the air pump and filters for about 6 or so hours. i think the stress of not having enough oxygen and then also having a foreign object in his belly caused him some internal problems because his intestines seemed to be coming out of his bottom. they were out for a few hours but after cleaning the tank and the air pump/filters being on again for 6 hrs , his intestines seemed to be sucked back in.

could the planter be pushing on his intestines and pushing them out? or could it have been all the stress? he seems okay now though. i was just wondering.

intestines peeking out.

planter in his belly.

Ouch! Poor Mr.Lee!
I'd say it's time to visit that lovely vet again and then put Mr.Lee in a beautiful minimalist tank - ike barely any gravel and only a rock twice his length and at least as wide!
Yikes, he's kinda like a two year old.

Good luck and good speed getting to the vet!

our roommates, had a drunken brawl

Maybe Mr.Lee needs to find a new room? I'd be more worried about things other than a simple power shortage.

not again!

it might sound cruel, but i think it's best for the fish and the keeper to humanely euthanize this shovelnose. the planter is way too deep to remove it without causing serious problems to the fish in question. i know it's a tough thing to do, but it's the best you can do.

when euthanizing this shovelnose, you also solve the problem of rehousing this fish again and again. it will grow to about 3 or 4 feet TL and monsterous tanks and filtration is needed to keep him/her happy.

lastly, these fish taste pretty good so you could eat him if you like.

again, i'm sorry to bring it to you like this, but i do think this is the best you can do....

I'm sure that you as a ownern of this think that DutchFry is a bit harsh - and I think it may be possible to phrase it a different way, but I was considering posting something similar. This fish is not easy to keep, it will definitely outgrow whatever tank you buy for it that is smaller than a decent size indoor swimming pool. The fact that it is a Red Tail Catfish, not a Shovelnose just makes the numbers slightly less in favour of your ability to get a decent size home for it.

They are very nice fish, but they need space that is simply not achievable in most people's home - a recent posting the current owner of a similar fish is buying a 6 x 3 x 3 foot tank - that's 1450 liter/380 US gal, and that will probably be good for a year or two at the most, then it's time for a bigger home again. The cost of that is in the excess of $2000, and that doesn't include any decoration of the tank, and minimal filtration/lighting/etc. And many homes are not built to have 3000+ lbs of weight stored on a few square meters/sqft of the floor, so you may want to consider doubling that amount to allow for redesign of your floor.

Next size [to last another 3-4 years] up tank will probably cost more than double that, and definitely need "floor-strengthening" to allow the floor to take the weight. Not to mention that you are taking up a size bigger than a queen size bed - slightly longer and not quite as wide perhaps, but still a large piece of floor-space. I certainly wouldn't be able to find a space to have such a size-tank - even if I converted my whole fish-room to a tank, it would be about big enough at 5-6 year old RTC.

These fish do not belong in home aquaria, and unfortunately, the number of zoos and public aquaria that are able to take a fish of this size is very small.

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Mats

well our roommates, had a drunken brawl and shut off the air pump and filters for about 6 or so hours.

I used to live in a pretty rowdy studenthouse myself, and yes, my tanks were in the communal living room

but my rroomies knew that if they ever came up with a stunt like that they'd likely wake up while I was castrating them with a blunt knife or don't wake up at all

once -and only once- a guy planted a harmless toy car in one of the tanks and afterwards I spoke to him
at length

needless to say, it never happened again!

if I were you I'd make a choice:
pound some heads in your house to impress (with your fists) on those morons to leave your fishes in peace

or move house.

cause somehow I can't see the "joke" of waking up one day and finding out your roomy has killed your fish because he had to pull an asshole stunt after a beer binge

stuff like this would make me very very angry if it was my catfish. angry enough to get out the first aid box.

maybe you could find out who did it, wait until that person passes out from excessive acohol consuption again, get out a spare heater and an extension cord and some lube and fry his roids.

that's something I'd do if someone killed my fish. spare heaters ftw!

Sidguppy:

maybe you could find out who did it, wait until that person passes out

Do these catfish eat people? Much safer than flowerpots.

Kidding!!! No chopping of room mates allowed!!
The heater may work though.

oh my gosh that poor fish... again!!! ?????

I agree also with the prior posts. That looks so painful.

MatsP wrote:I'm sure that you as a ownern of this think that DutchFry is a bit harsh - and I think it may be possible to phrase it a different way, but I was considering posting something similar.....The fact that it is a Red Tail Catfish, not a Shovelnose just makes the numbers slightly less in favour of your ability to get a decent size home for it.

i'm sorry to put it this way! english is not my first language and i really tried to find the good words for this cruel message, i'm sorry for being harsh!

is it really a red tailed cat? I thought it was Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum....

Sorry, it is neither (or both) - from previous thread, it's a RTC x Shovelnose hybrid.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?t=25417

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Mats

I certainly agree about educating the roomies - my favourite phrase is educate with a baseball bat or a housebrick!

I also agree that these hybrids get way too big way too quickly & is not an ideal captive at all.

If you are determined to keep it, there is one thing to try to see if it will regurgitate the planter. Try feeding very strong flavoured oily fish like mackerel. Often this causes regurgitation & it may cough up the planter. This has been proven to work on some consumed items, but sadly not all. Be aware if regurgitation does occur a 100% waterchange will be required as the water will be highly polluted & be no good to house the fish in at all.

okay well we aren't planning on eating him! that's just wrong and has already been suggested by our roommates brother, lol. we don't want to put him down. we are looking for a new house now but it looks like we will end up in an apartment anyway so we wont be able to build him a pond. the doctor we use is from the university of philadelphia. a great veterinary teaching hospital. we are thinking about asking if they would like to adopt him, that way we can visit whenever we want. i don't think he will be able to cough this one up seeing as it is so far back and its been there for a little more than a week. he seems comfortable though. he isnt acting anything like he did when he ate the last planter or when he ate the shells. i think his belly is just big enough for it. also if youre wondering, the planter is not solid. it is full of holes. if you look at my other post from the first time, you can see a pic of the squished planter we had taken out when it was stuck in his mouth. so he can eat and he has pooped normally. so if it wasn't for the other day when his intestines were out, i wouldn't have really thought anything was wrong. we'll see what happens i guess. i'm going to call the doctor this weekend and see how much it will cost. i know he does surgery at his office and he likes to cut everyone a deal. so i'm hoping it won't be too much.

thank you guys for your posts and help!

oh and yes, the roomies and their drunken friends were ripped a new one

oh and yes, the roomies and their drunken friends were ripped a new one

Justice prevails, musta felt good.

okay. just wanted to post some pics of the catfish so you can see his relative size to the tank. and also one of the planter.

Planter::





Mr. Lee::

I don't know if it was discussed last time, but it certainly looks like that tank is far too small already - what size is the tank (in feet/inches/metric rather than gallons). And be aware that you will not be able to buy a glass-tank to house this fish eventually, it's not practical to make tanks that are much over 4ft x 8ft from glass. It will be a "koi pond" or some such - generally made from blue plastic.

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Mats

i don't know the exact measurements. its 150 gallons tho.
but!! mr. lee finally coughed it up!!! surprisingly so!!

I think Mr.Lee is eyeing up that golfball and seashell as after dinner snacks...

i was thinking the same thing re the golf ball.

any updats on how he is doing?

A standard 150g tank is 72x18x24 - which according to the standard of 4L x 2L x 2L is good for a fish up to about 9" - maybe you can stretch it to 12" for a very docile fish (e.g. a single large pleco).

I'm glad it spit out the planter.

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Mats

I think Mr.Lee is eyeing up that golfball and seashell as after dinner snacks...

agreed, even the small rock in the first picture can be a hazard

there's still way too much crap in there, Mystic

anything smaller than his head (and headsise is from nose to dorsal fin implant) shouln't be in the tank.
then you can avoid risks.

the golfball and the shell have been taken out. we were leaving em in there cause our other fish play with them and we thought that planter wasnt coming out. but since he coughed it up we took them out just in case he decided he was hungry.

we fed him chopped meat the other day. he turned into a blood thirsty fool, lol. he looked like a shark the way he was spinning around the water looking for the meat.

he is doing well. crazy as usual

oh and also, those rocks are huge. they are just pushed down into the gravel. they are much bigger than his head.

MatsP wrote:A standard 150g tank is 72x18x24 - which according to the standard of 4L x 2L x 2L is good for a fish up to about 9" - maybe you can stretch it to 12" for a very docile fish (e.g. a single large pl*co).

I'm glad it spit out the planter.

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Mats

Sorry if I am making some fuss, but to me standard is 10lx4lx4l, and for quite not so much moving fish perhaps 8lx3lx3l, but REALY NOT smaller then 7lx2,5lx2,5l. Your tank is like way to smal. The fish can't even hide!! The final size neccesery should be measured, not in liters, but in tenthousends of liters. It is highly unsuited for anyone less then like a multibillonair with a lot of fammely to take care of the fish after he died. It's less impacting to just keep a pack of sint bernhard's ;)

Well, going double again on every side is making the tank 8x larger, so I'm not sure it makes that much difference, considering even with my rule, we're looking at around 20000 liters - 20K or 160K liters isn't going to make that much difference in the need to be rich. I'm not sure billionaire is the level needed, but certainly need to have a good income (or a rather large amount of money in savings). In this country, a 100 liter tank with basic equipment costs a bit more than £100, and a 400 liter tank around £500. One can draw the conclusion that a tank costs AROUND £1 per liter. It probably gets a bit worse as it grows larger, but not extremely much. So around £20K (or £160K if we go by your measures). Then of course, it comes to maintenance. Just replacing the filter media when the filter takes 50-100 liters of media will cost a bit... ;)

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Mats

Indeed, these fish are not for the not so wealty. This tread: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =4&t=26537
Shows how one should keep this kind of fish. It's a pleasure just watching it on video!

hey guys, it doesn't seem like it matters how big the tank is, i'm going to post another topic to show you what mr. lee has been up to.

he's doing what his ancestors (the non hybrid versions of them) do in the wild as a rule: eat anything that fits in the mouth.

very natural behaviour.

let's not forget; it's a huge carnivorous fish, not a person.
and he does what he should do: eat other fish.

well i understand that. but i also didn't think the pleco would fit in his mouth yet. but apparentlly, he can. most of the objects he was eating though weren't living and most of them still didn't fit down his throat. so yea, i understand that whole "whatever fits in his mouth" theory, just wasn't expecting him to eat his tankmates.

actually for me it's the reverse.

I find it surprising that he's dumb enough to eat golf balls or sucktion cups while still ignoring live prey.......

what he did now was behaving perfectly natural, even if he's a man-made fish.
the furniture thing baffled me, because smaller catfish don't eat sand or small rocks, even if it fits.

a piece of plastic doesn't smell like prey, doesn't move, doesn't trigger the big pair of "hunting whiskers" (the large ones on the upper jaw).
that he would turn on tankmates was an absolute given in my book; that he'd eat inedible plastics is strange behaviour.

haha well, he is a strange one. in fact most of the stuff he has eaten (sans Bob) have been stuff he's actually had to dig up. like the planters were all under the gravel because they once had plants in them that died. not only did he dig them up, but he also took out the rocks & the plant bulbs/roots. then ate it lol. he never actually ate the golfball, he usually just played with it but we took it out just in case.