Where do y’all get your rope fish from?

[sevs and sajicas for me]

Try aquarium fish house and malone's monsters on facebook. Malone's just got a shipment of them in. I've ordered them from aquarium fish house before but they didn't make it through QT. Though I've ordered other things from them and they've always given me top quality fish. Also trinsfish.com keeps them from time to time. Even if they aren't on their website, email them and they may be able to hook you up.

 

[fishhead0103666]

Thanks for all the replies everyone, I have a good number of options to look into now.

 

[twentyleagues]

The way they catch these guys is very hard on them. Alot die in shippong or qt. Ive heard they soap the area or something when catching these. Ive heard other chemicals used too. There have been 3 people to get them to breed in captivity but the offspring didn't make it very long.

 

[sevs and sajicas for me]

I've had a very hard time getting healthy ones through QT. I've been trying for a little over a year and have bought around 8 with only 2 surviving. I only have 1 left as one was being dominated so I rehomed the smaller one. I'll likely rehome the last one as well as I think I'll focus more on bichirs going forward as they seem a little easier for me to find healthy ones and keep.

 

[twentyleagues]

Alot of Bichirs are "captive" bred so they dont use weird stuff to capture them.

 

[fishhead0103666]

Why did you put captive in quotation marks?

I get that they tend to be weakened from capturing and die often in quarantine but do they ship well? I’m thinking that if they ship well I might buy them from other aquarists instead of playing Russian roulette with my lfs.

 

[Uglyknob]

We have two from Pet Supermarket in quarantine right now. The female is struggling, but the male seems alright so far. Neither have eaten anything yet (about 5-6 days in). I was worried about the female, so I treated the tank with low-dose paraguard and that seemed to help - cause she was playing with the male a bit the next day. I think we only paid 15.99 or something for them. Props to Pet Supermarket, which we've actually had surprising good luck with, because they wouldn't let us buy them without verifying how big the target tank was.

 

[twentyleagues]

Why did you put captive in quotation marks?

I get that they tend to be weakened from capturing and die often in quarantine but do they ship well? I’m thinking that if they ship well I might buy them from other aquarists instead of playing Russian roulette with my lfs.

They tend to build ponds off of sections of the river in which the grow quite a few out. Alot are still caught wild too. But with Bichirs for the most part they use nets. Alot of Bichirs are caught while fishing for food fish while ropes are in partiularly hard places to retreive them, and nets dont work well in huge weed beds.

 

[sevs and sajicas for me]

Alot of Bichirs are "captive" bred so they dont use weird stuff to capture them.

I should have been more specific. The bichirs I have right now and in the past (other than my albino sen) are all WC. But even the WC bichirs seem to do much better than the ropes. ... likely due to the way they are caught as you mentioned.

 

[magpie]

The Wet Spot gets them semi-regularly.