That was fun and educational to read. Nothing even comes close to the quality first hand experience. Thanks, Moe. Remind us how long have you had the ARTC and how big was it when you got it and when you sold (?) it?
Bare in mind that was my only one so it may be the exception, but it matches with everyone else's story pretty well so it leads me to believed me to be the norm. I had that fish from approximately January of 2014 to the fall of that year maybe September to October. I acquired the fish at 14-16 inches and when he left me he was touching front to back on my 120. I personally liked it, I wouldn't have minded dedicating a big tank to it, because I'm 90% sure it would use all the space I had gave him/her. It was active enough for me, and once it got big, I could have probably had a sustained colony of much smaller fish. My specimen was active, I enjoyed keeping him.
Thank you very much for the detailed answer.
Ok but why do you came to the conclusion, that the ARTC bite is stronger then the SARTCes bite? They are both in roughly the same weight class, but the SARTC seems to be bulkier. Is it because of your observations or because of scientificly measured differences?
Because as stated above, obervations are very important, but the problem is, that the SARTC simply will not bite anyone to death, because this catfish either swallows or ignores tankmates. Then again, this might also be a hint, that the SARTC never developed a strong bite, because it does not use it anyway, so you might be right either way.
I know they actualy measured the bite strenght of piranha and the rhombeus came out stronger than even sharks in comparsion to it's size. Would be very interesting to compare the biggest freshwater predatory catfish as well, like ARTC, SARTC, Bagarius, Silurus Glanis, Brachyplatystoma Filamentosum, the african sharptooth catfish etc.
I came to that conclusion based off of what I deem as common sense, sartc seem to be more scavenger like, they have a bigger build like you mentioned therefore a bigger mouth with the wider head, unless wyckioides head gets the same width with the supposed extra foot they may attain in the wild, whereas artc seem more predatory, and with their aggressive nature, they evolved to have a more powerful bite based off of their behaviors overtime. I'm not saying by any means sartc don't have a strong bite, I wouldn't doubt one breaking a humans hand or maybe even removing it if it wanted to without much issue, but they don't put that power to use so over time they lose it due to not needing it, I could be wrong, they may have the stronger bite, but it makes sense to me that artc has a stronger bite, and look at its little cousin, go on YouTube and look at a wyckii bite a magnet or look at justarns video with his biting the Midas, you hear the power in the bite, you see the power in the bite, I just don't get any of that with the South American red tails. Like I said I could be wrong but in my opinion the artc has a stronger bite due to the fact it uses it more often than not, to where it became a necessity, hearing the wyckii bite down on nothing even in one of the videos you can just hear the power. It fascinates me, the way these fish can vary and that goes for every fish, its the reason why I want to become an ichthyologist one day. I love learning about them and discussing them. So to answer your question, based off of my observations on the nature, behavior etc., of these fish, I've concluded imo the artc has a stronger bite force. As you said the sartc shows no signs of usage to need a powerful bite, it's like a big vacuum, it just doesn't seem to need it, where as the wyckioides on the other hand, uses it quite a lot, the one I had decorated my tank I would change it just to watch him put the drift wood and move it wherever he wanted, up, down, right, left, any direction he wanted. He'djust use his mouth for everything, so it makes sense to have a strong bite. I would love to conduct an experiment of which you speak one day. Would be very interesting indeed to see the outcomes. I love oddballs, and I can't stay away from catfish either lol, characins, not all, and catfish, are my main interest as of now. Only thing with that experiment is if you have fish with different max sizes, and your viewing them the same size, it can be just like people, a teenagers muscle and a mans muscle is carried much differently, so that could effect results. Many variables can play into that, would definitely be a fun interesting experiment imo.
