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Hi all,

I've 3 Clarias batrachus--Walking Catfish..abt 3-4'' These fishes r amazing..I've had them 4 abt 3 wks when they were abt an inch. Since them, their diet have grown from fish flakes to sinking mini pellets, to large carnivores pellets, to feeders--all within 3 wks!! I'd like 2 know, if its ok 2 feed them on alternate daes, but making sure they have a gd meal during each feeding. Or should the duration betw each feeding b longer? I dun wish 2 overfeed them, but neither do i wish 2 starve them.

I've noticed tt sometimes, they'll fight among themselves..although nuthin serious happened. Is this normal? Thanx!

You can (or should) feed them on alternate days. They are greedy and messy feeders and will foul up the water fairly quickly if you feed too heavily (although being Clarias, the lousy water conditions wouldn't faze them one bit).
They are also not very sociable and therefore fights are to be expected.
BTW, if these are the feeder Clarias, these are more likely to be C. gariepinus.

Silurus wrote:BTW, if these are the feeder Clarias, these are more likely to be C. gariepinus.

Is there any way to differentiate C. batrachus from C. gariepinus fry? Clariid catfish fry are sold as feeder fish in singapore.

My friend Chan Sow-Yan once bought a 15-20cm clariid (looked like gariepinus) from a Thai food shop at Golden Mile centre in Singapore and put it in his garden pond which was stocked with a group of C. batrachus. The C. batrachus all ganged up on the gariepinus and killed it!

Is there any way to differentiate C. batrachus from C. gariepinus fry?

Usually by color. Clarias gariepius fry tend to be more mottled.

The feeder clarias fry being sold in singapore are not mottled at all, they vary from pinkish to dark brown in colour. They are only 2-3cm long so its hard to tell i guess.

Also, i don't know what the Thai C. gariepinus x C. macrocephalus hybrids look like, but the feeder Clarias fry all have prominant occipital processes like C. batrachus or C. gariepinus, not the rounded-off skull of C. macrocephalus.

Hi LazyCLanX

I agree with Silurus about feeding clarias every other day.
They are greedy and can store food in their stomach without actually consuming it.
They`ll eat almost anything.. more or less a dustbin with fins. You can usually tell how much they`ve eaten by the bloated stomachs.
Mine get floating tetra pellets daily, algae wafers (big ones) and either tiger prawns,normal prawns, shrimps or freshwater mussels every other day.
They seem happy and healthy and water quality stays good.
They`ll also take chocolate cake and pieces of digestive biscuits (just as a treat) but aren`t so keen on real veg so the pleco`s cucumber is safe

In Malaysia the trap fishermen use oil palm nuts to bait their traps and they get C batrachus.

I fed the one I had bananas on a few occasions (it would happily eat the pieces with gusto), but it seemed to pass through the gut undigested.

In rural parts of SE Asia, latrines are often built as huts over water, like over a pond or river, and there are anecdotal reports of catfish cathering under them to eat human waste when someone goes to the toilet.