Catfishes
As said before, food is an important part & often people over-fed. Catfish usually get caught out from the other side, under feeding. Every fish in an aquarium eats flakes & no one I've have met hasn't used flakes. No harm in that however if the right amount of flakes is used to not over feed fish, very little sinks to the bottom. Hence catfish & other low level fish eat very little. There is a variety of food for catfish such as pellets, which sink immediately, however again keep remembering over feeding & don't supply too many.
One other word of caution is their barbels. Those are used to locate food therefore when the catfish is swimming the barbels will be moving in & out of the gravel. If the gravel is sharp, the barbels will be damaged. Round stones & sand are fine but if you're using any other form of gravel check it to make sure the catfish's barbels will not be cut.
As you will read about below, many catfish can survive on atmospheric air & often they quickly run to the surface & at the same speed, swim to the bottom.
| Bristlenose Catfish (Ancistrus temminckii) sticks itself to any object & obviously the glass of a tank. In the wild they come from the Amazon basin & grow to 5". They are good in numbers however the males can be territorial. As herbivorous, they eat algae, cucumbers & other forms including bogwood. Males have barbels whereas females seem not to. Breeding is easy.
Whilst deciding once to re-arrange the fish into different tanks, one tank needed to be clean before the fish were removed. When the clean up was done, the fish required in that tanks were put into it. The next day the fish were checked to see if they were all right. Sadly one was missing! Unknown as to where it was, I looked at items used in the clean up. I picked up a wet towel & there he was. After putting him into the tank, he took several minutes & then swam away. As far as hours, it would be close to 15 hours within the towel. Due to its wetness, he survived & now, 10 months after the event, is still alive. |
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Bronze Corydoras (Corydoras aenus) is suitable in a community tank & are best kept together with any Corydoras. Their natural habitat is Brazil, Peru & other countries in South America. The size, in wild, is just less than 3". They tend not too uproots plants but are constantly looking for food. A number of variants include sailfin & albinos & all of them are keen to breed. |
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Like all Corydoras, males Peppered Corydoras (Corydoras paleatus) are slimmer & more pointed anal fins than females. Its size is the same as the Bronze Cory but they are mainly found in Brazil. Albinos are about but no idea which version they are! |  |
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Without a common name, its scientific name is Pterygoplichthys multiradiatus. Sadly the one in the tank didn't survive more than a few months. I'm not entirely aware of the problem & equally not a great deal about them. I understand they grow to a large degree & would have been the largest fish I could have had. I am aware that they stick to objects & are herbivores. Needless to say algae, cucumber, peas & other green vegetables are eaten. |
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