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I'm wondering how active catfish tend to be in a tank with just catfish in it and no dithers or other fish in the rest of the tank to make them feel safe or distract them. I'm still going over stock lists for the 180G I'm setting up in 1-4 months and one of the options I was considering was 1 Striped Raph, 1 Gibbiceps Pleco, 1 Yellow Bullhead, and 1 Channel Catfish (growout).

I already have the raph, bullhead, and pleco in my 75G now and the bullhead and pleco will definitely be in this tank no matter what the other fish will be. The raph doesn't need upgraded but if I do a catfish themed tank I'd like to put him in it.

My goal would be to get all the cats to be as active as possible but not have any dithers in midwater, would this be possible to do! If there are certain conditions I could make to make them more active (other than absolutely no lights ) please feel free to let me know.

Need be, I could add a school of giant danios or the like to make them more active but I'd prefer to stick to an all cats theme.

IME dithers wont work for Platydoras or bullheads - Platydoras just need subdued lighting & lots of security, whereas the bullheads will eat dither fish (at least my 7" nebulosus ate 2" minnows)

Your catfish species are pretty much all light shy species & encouraging more activity may be difficult, compared to corys as an example

Ok. Believe it or not I've been keeping my 8" natalis with 2.75-3" giant danios for about half a year and he hasn't made a move on one yet. Not to say that a channel cat wouldn't though. I'd be willing to make the lighting very subdued, just not absent all together.

I would say that once the fish get to a decent size and have been in the tank for a couple of years then they should be active even with the lights on. At least this was my experience with .

Well, regardless of whether or not dithers help, I'll be having them either way due to me having to shuffle some tanks and fish around. This is he new stock:

6 Giant Danios
1 Asian Bumblebee Catfish
1 Striped Raphael Catfish
1 Gibbiceps Pleco
1 Yellow Bullhead
1 Channel Catfish (growout) or 1 Brown Bullhead

On a separate matter than the original post of this thread, do you guys think a channel cat (growout until 18", then upgrade) or a brown bullhead would be better? Channel cats (and blues, but they're far to large) are my all time favorite species of fish but I'm not sure how long a channel would last before I'd need to upgrade, which is no problem if it takes a few years to get 18-20". I just don't want a 1.5' channel cat on my hands after a year. What are your guys experiences with this cat?