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Hi guys im setting up a 6 foot tank and i have seen small walking catfish for sale for 7 pounds. How big will these fish get and how many could i keep together please?

About 40 cm. You can probably keep them together when they are young. When they get bigger, they won't be as sociable and you might have to keep them apart.

Definitely agree with silurus. Only go for one, they become a bit more docile when they are kept singly. My one has grown rapidly (expect to see growth in weeks not months or years!)
I'm not sure if you could keep any other fish with it, maybe silurus could recomend something, possibly a few rift ch*****d?

jason

Well, you can always try keping them with fairly robust fish like larger doradids or plecs.
I'm not a cichlid person, but from what I can see in many cases, cichlids and catfish don't make a particularly good combination (one usually ends up beating up the other, and being scaleless, catfish tend to be on the losing end). If you want a mid-water swimmer, tinfoil barbs will probably work, though they're not particularly colorful or interesting.

I`ve seen Clarias batrachus as big as 70cm. They can grow to as long as 100cm to what i konw. FishBase don`t give the correct size with this fish.

What you've probably seen is <i>C. gariepinus</i>. Asian <i>Clarias</i> cannot grow bigger than 40 cm (in all of my years of field work, I've never even seen an Asian <i>Clarias</i> of any species reach 40 cm).

I agree with getting one - Having 2 myself I can tell you that they are demons together lol splashing around like you wouldnt believe - so yeah get one.

Silurus wrote:Well, you can always try keping them with fairly robust fish like larger doradids or plecs.

How about the doradid Megalodoras uranoscopus (formerly irwini). Nothing can bother them, including you. They get big, but grow a lot more slowly than a Clarias.

Don't know if this is a good plan; Mother of Snails is though, but also very peaceful. And the body may be heavily armoured, but fins, eyes and whiskers can still be ripped off.
Such a slowmoving target hasn't got a chance against fast, flexible Clarias.

SHould be fine. <i>Clarias</i> are hardly aggressive towards larger fish. Besides, the <i>Megalodoras</i> will eventually outgrow the <i>Clarias</i>, if you have the space for it.

What you've probably seen is C. gariepinus. Asian Clarias cannot grow bigger than 40 cm (in all of my years of field work, I've never even seen an Asian Clarias of any species reach 40 cm).

So there must be an albino form of C. gariepinus in the markets? It was really big Clarias what i saw years back in LFS.

SHould be fine. Clarias are hardly aggressive towards larger fish. Besides, the Megalodoras will eventually outgrow the Clarias, if you have the space for it.

My C. batrachus did bite furiosly ten times bigger Oxydoras niger. Clarias was 15 cm and O. niger 55 cm- not the size difference but the mass difference was enourmous. My mistake was to introduce O. niger long after Clarias had made the hole aquarium its territory. Clarias went and "the black beauty" stayed.

Clarius definitely have a bad reputation. I have kept two and have had few problems of mixing other fish with them. The only thing my clarius have ever seem to have a problem with is midwater swimming fish. Anything thats not quick enough to get out of its way is dead. I have mixed clarius with plecos large and small, dwarfe giraffe catfish, some small shovelnose species (unknown). The only problem I had was when I first brought the latest one. I had to adopt a 2.5 inch tiger barb as a condition of getting a free tank from a freind. Very attractive green variety. I felt that this might cause a problem with the clarius but in the end decided to take a chance. I felt pretty bad after I can tell you. Ill never do that again if I suspect there is going to be a problem. The tiger barb was consumed in one night leaving only the fins on the substrate. I felt pretty guilty. In contrast I have never had a problem mixing other catfish with the walking cat. ( allthough this probably isnt normal, I know).

I think now after spending a long time looking in the lfs's that a large asian setup is just going to be impractical, from a cost point of view. I really cant afford the size of tank or space to keep the kind of fish I want to. So I wont. Community tanks dont really intrest me much, and the larger asian cats dont mix well with other asian species that are commonly available, due to predation. Ill stick with my beloved clarius and give him friends that he tolerates.( like his pleco companion) and keep it simple. If I can get one more fish live with the other two that will be achievment enough, let alone finding an asian one from the same type of water.
If anyone has setup asian tanks containing medium size cats it would be nice to see pics. I get bored of all those big Pims! (too colourfull!)

thanks
jason

You can set up an all-Asian setup using mid-sized Asian cats (not all Asian cats get big, you know).
Get a school of pearl cats or two-spot cats (if they are available). They get along really well with most other Asian fish. The two spot cats do best in a blackwater setup, though, and fish for those can be really expensive (like chocolate gouramies).