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I have aquired a beutiful Blue Whale Catfish. He is around 2.5 inches long and his color is wonderful. I am wondering if anyone who has had one of these can help me with a few questions I have.
1) My guy is very spaztic, is this normal?
2) What have you found is the best way to feed, when do you feed, and what?

If anyone can help me out I would be very greatful. I have wanted one of these guys for a long time and have read everything I can get my hands on about them. I would really like to speak to some one who had kept one before.

This is quite a specialist fish with some specific requirements. To get the best from the fish in captivity it needs a low-lit tank, high oxygenation, strong flow & plenty of swimming space. As it gets to a foot long a 6x2x2 provides the space required as it is a constantly active species - it's one of those species where the 4Lx2L footprint needs adjusting. It can be fed on chopped clam, mussel, oyster, earthworm or live bloodworm, frozen bloodworm - i have had no success really with dry prepared foods, very little was consumed & they seemed to only want to eat "moist meaty foods".

I've seen them kept with other fish but personally i wouldn't as they can't be trusted not to bite a chunk out of them as this is what they do naturally whilst swimming in the river channels they inhabit. Even if they don't other tankmates seem to realise they are danger which keeps them stressed out & likely to suffer outbreaks of disease. From what i can understand they do well in groups which is all the better given the need to keep them in a species tank of considerable size

My guy is very spaztic, is this normal?

you mean it's hyperactive?
this is normal.

these rarely rest on the bottom of the tank, but ruise around the tank almost 24/7, at high speed

it's a fish that lives "out there" in the open water, in the current, hunting for prey

you DO know that there are very few other fish you can keep with it?

small fish will get eaten; larger fish will get eaten, but not in 1 go, but many small go's.

I am aware this is not a fish to be trusted with others. Right now he is in a tank with a couple of Placos and one Sturgon. I have him in a 39 gal tank for now, but am prepaired to give him a 90 gal on his own when needed.

The tank he is in now has a filter for a 100 gal on it, so there is plenty of water flow. I also have a 130 GPH pond pump attached to the side to provide more cross current.

I like the food suggestions giving, but what about beef heart?

Thanks everyone!

Beef heart is a controversial food in the sense that one group of people think it's pretty close to perfect, and others think it's bad.

It's good because it's rich in protein and such.

The contention is based on the fact that fat from warmblooded animals is solid at the temperature that the fish live at. This is, according to those who don't like this type of food, bad for the fish and will form hard deposits in the fish, particularly around the liver.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:Beef heart is a controversial food in the sense that one group of people think it's pretty close to perfect, and others think it's bad.

It's good because it's rich in protein and such.

The contention is based on the fact that fat from warmblooded animals is solid at the temperature that the fish live at. This is, according to those who don't like this type of food, bad for the fish and will form hard deposits in the fish, particularly around the liver.

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Mats

Okay Mats,
Now I am really confused! any clue as to where I can get info on useing beef heart as a food sources. My guy hasn't acted excited about black worms, blood worms, or earthworms ( I raise my own night crawlers). I have not tried any shell fish as of yet.

Thanks for your help

I'm sorry, I don't really have any advice on it. Your LFS probably have frozen beef heart, but I don't know.

How long have you had the fish?

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Mats

This is a very new addition to my collection. I really want him to thrive. Unless I can find an answer to the questions about beef heart, I think I will stay away from it. There is plenty of other foods that are readly available for him to chow on.

Thank you so very much for your help and advice.

It is VERY common for fish to not eat for the first several days, sometimes a couple of weeks after introduction, and to not eat new types of food. So I would keep offering one or two types of food - if you switch and swap the food every time, the fish may not "discover" the new food.

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Mats

I remember a conversation with a retailer who had difficulty getting a small group of these to feed but live bloodworm were evenually accepted.

If you are really struggling to get them to feed after say, 3 weeks, i would suggest putting in a very fresh trout head with the gill covers removed & maybe some blood or meat juices to try to stimulate them to feed.

(i'd also keep a real close eye on the sturgeon & plecos for any sign of wounds)

Also, you may want to culture your own livebearers or other small species of fish. You can then gutload these with highly nutritious vegetable-based foods so he gets the most out of them. Prepared foods are the most practical, but be aware the cat might never accept them.

I can't say how well or if at all whether these catfish will eat beef heart but they sound like they could handle strips of raw hear deviened and free of all fat and connective tissues.
As to whether or not beef heart is bad for fish I have raised 1000's of Discus on beef heart blend I make.
I have even bred several pairs of wild Discus on a diet of nothing but beef heart blend. So if it has any drawbacks other than sometimes being a messy food I don't know what those effects might be. been using it for at least 45 years.

Discus are regared as sensitive, but regarding feeding are they sensitive indeed?

menay discusbreeders keep them in hot water, 32 C - 90 F - as an example. Most other fish are kept much cooler

Beef, cattle when alife, is warmblooded, at 37 C - that is 100 F. The colder the beef is kept, the datrder the fats become. @ 32 C, they are solid, but moldable. @ 27, one can not mold them anymore. Therefore, fish kept @ 32 C may survive food which will kill them @ 27 C.

And as stated, I don't consider discus as very sensitive regarding food.

So, Larry, feeding your discus for 45 years is not convincing to me, as we are talking about other fish, mostly kept cooler

I feed Discus frozen beef heart and I keep them at 84*F. Normally Discus may be kept temporarily(5 days) at 90*F in conjunction with the treatment of a specific disease but they will not last long if kept that warm routinely.

I have fed beef heart to hundreds of species, grown more than a few Arowanas from babies to to 2 feet long on mainly beef heart. I haven't ever had any problems with it as a tropical fish food.
I may not convince you of anything and my years of experience may not mean anything to you but I do have a more experience with keeping and breeding fish than most so I can't be doing too much that is wrong.
I can definitely determine from your comments that you do not know much about Discus.

You are supposed to remove fat, blood vessels and connective tissues before beginning to process it.
After manually removing as much as possible I run it though an electric meat grinder which removes even more undesirable tissues. Then the ground pure heart tissue is blended to a puree. The final product is suitable for discus fry which have only been free swimming for 7 days to full grown adults.
Discus are more demanding than most fish when it comes to their diet. As a food is good enough for most carnivorous fish. The history of properly prepared beef heart blends is well documented but most of the commercially available preparations do not meet my higher standards; make your own for best results. Proteins are proteins regardless of the source and there are no peculiarities about beef heart muscle tissue and those of worms commonly fed to fish. The temperatures are irrelevant.

I'm currently rearing a batch of F1 Royal Blue Discus on my beef heart blend and they are thriving on it. So are the L134 and L333 in there to clean up the scraps.

apistomaster wrote:I can definitely determine from your comments that you do not know much about Discus.

That's right, I never kept them, and I certainly never will. I just don't care for them.

However, obviously your line of argument was: if it's good enough for discus, it's good enough for other fish. We are NOT dicussing discus, we are discussing feeding other fish.

And I think I can advise against feeding other fish beef. Fish don't find beef in nature. As all kinds of food, beef needs special equipment, which fish don't need to have, and therefore will not have.

Arowana is among the very few exceptions of fish eating mammals (mice, squirrels are jumped at and snaped out of a tree). I'm not surprised they can have beef. Arowana is not a standard fish discussing feeding

I know some find it odd that carnivorous fish do so well on a good beef heart blend as part of their diet but the facts are that many fish do. Killiefish, Characins, some Catfish, Apistogramma, Betta species and Discus to name some all do well when part of their diet is a quality beef heart blend. I do not think much of any of the commercially made beef heart blends because they do not grind fine enough nor do they remove enough of the fat. These inferior products are bad because of how low their standards of quality are but just because the heart comes from a warm blooded animal does not mean it isn't also a good food for fish which are carnivorous even if they happen to be small Tetras. Why blow off a food you can make yourself for little cost which has so many obvious benefits as demonstrated by the numbers of species which love to eat it? It isn't purely a Discus specialty food, it is a good food to use as part of any balanced diet for fish which have evolved the short digestive tracts typical of most carnivores. It is not essential for success in the keeping and breeding of any fish but it's benefits and low cost make it food of great utility. No one is forcing anyone to use a good beef heart blend but the utility of a good, well cleaned beef heart blend is undeniable. It is so easy to add other foods like F.D. Blood worms and earth worm flakes or modify it to suit the particular needs of a fish. I happen to add a little of these to my own mix. Beef heart blends are excellent vehicles for the delivery of internal medications or customized for particular species.

In some older aquarium periodicals some articles were written comparing the growth rates of Bettas with others fed snail meat, beef heart, "Gordons Formula", a laboratory food developed by the late Myron Gordon which is cattle liver based still appears in books on the feeding of laboratory animals and earth worms and in all cases the fish fed beef heart grew exceptionally well. The Betta study was a limited but I have raised many 1000's of Betta splendens and Apistogramma species on beef heart blend in addition to my Discus so it shows at least that the food is assimilated well and that fish growth is good on it. I don't recommend beef heart for primarily herbivorous fish but for carnivorous species it is a fine food. The fact that fish don't normally eat cattle or their parts in nature is irrelevant. Until the "Mad Cow Disease" syndrome cause became known, all commercial fish foods made by the most reputable companies incorporated animal and bone meal made from the scraps of livestock so the use of non-aquatic animal components in fish foods is as old as the hobby.

I fed mine freeze dried ocean plankton, and it greedily ate it in its typical spastic-like fashion. Frankly, I was surprised that it consumed this food. I didn't keep mine long enough to experiment with too many other foods though. One can seldom go wrong in offering appropriately sized live foods to nearly any fish.

Nice education guys, thanx!!! Is there a centralized thread for such a discussion of pros and cons of beef heart diet? If yes, this thread may be good to link to it and also it'd be good for me to continue reading up about this.