I am thinking about getting 2 or 3 centipede knives will they have to compete for food with my cory cats
Centipede Knifefish feeding
- Thread starter mattmez
- Start date
You may have some aggression problems if you get more than one male in that size group. (Males have the super long tails, and they bite off eachothers tails, as well as signal jam for aggression) 6 may be a better number if you have at least a 75 gal tank.
Duidae are found in nature in the same streams as Cory cats, and are nocturnal, thus it shouldn't be a problem if your Cories are out during the day.
Just cover the bottom with almond/katappa leaves and the knives will lay on their sides amongst the leaves during the day, cammoflauging themselves as a leaf. Then at night, make sure there is plenty of small live food in there (daphnia, cyclops, bloodworms etc) since they won't have been dead food trained when you get them. I do not know if it is possible to get them on dead food but I have heard others claim they have.
This is much the same for elegans, which is a slightly different species that is always confused for duidae and found in similar places. The issue here is that elegans grows a little over a foot in length. It's basically 50-50 what species your going to get (or a mixture of the two) when you order a "centipede knifefish" the name duidae is always listed (because that's what people want) but they are very commonly mistaken.
If you are considering this for a smaller tank, I would advise against it, you should plan on housing elegans since it's so likely you will be mistakenly sent them. And for these social knives, they are not peaceful all the time, there is much fighting going on, the problem is that it is done through signal jamming which is totally invisible unless you're measuring the electromagnetic spectrum. but the males do bite off the tails of the other males, since the long tail extension is used as a status symbol.
Hope that helps! But in answer to your original question, as long as you feed them at different times, and make sure there are lots of live bugs in the leaves all the time, it shouldn't be a problem.
Duidae are found in nature in the same streams as Cory cats, and are nocturnal, thus it shouldn't be a problem if your Cories are out during the day.
Just cover the bottom with almond/katappa leaves and the knives will lay on their sides amongst the leaves during the day, cammoflauging themselves as a leaf. Then at night, make sure there is plenty of small live food in there (daphnia, cyclops, bloodworms etc) since they won't have been dead food trained when you get them. I do not know if it is possible to get them on dead food but I have heard others claim they have.
This is much the same for elegans, which is a slightly different species that is always confused for duidae and found in similar places. The issue here is that elegans grows a little over a foot in length. It's basically 50-50 what species your going to get (or a mixture of the two) when you order a "centipede knifefish" the name duidae is always listed (because that's what people want) but they are very commonly mistaken.
If you are considering this for a smaller tank, I would advise against it, you should plan on housing elegans since it's so likely you will be mistakenly sent them. And for these social knives, they are not peaceful all the time, there is much fighting going on, the problem is that it is done through signal jamming which is totally invisible unless you're measuring the electromagnetic spectrum. but the males do bite off the tails of the other males, since the long tail extension is used as a status symbol.
Hope that helps! But in answer to your original question, as long as you feed them at different times, and make sure there are lots of live bugs in the leaves all the time, it shouldn't be a problem.
Bigger numbers are better. More
females than males, lots of leaves to hide in, and make room so it doesn't become a problem if they end up growing over 12 in. And you should be fine
females than males, lots of leaves to hide in, and make room so it doesn't become a problem if they end up growing over 12 in. And you should be fine
