27"Goliath
- Thread starter WU CHUN
- Start date
Some threads,like this one,should be stickied so others can easily see an example of what a huge tiger fish looks like and the sized tank probably required for the fish to reach such a size.
I would have to agree with you. And the funny thing is this is probably the largest GATF that any of us have seen on this site in a private aquarium. Many people think "Oh, well GATF gets too large, I'll get a VATF instead". In actuality there have been more cases of us seeing VATF breaching 30 inches and closing in very closely on the 3 foot mark.
While that size may not be much different from other larger fish that we keep, what many don't see is these are big powerful open water fish that are built like torpedoes and built for speed.
I honestly wouldn't keep anything larger than Forskahlii in anything less than 600 gallons.
I'd love to see this.... I was under the impression it was pretty tough to get VATF over 2'.
The sad truth about Characins is people don't care how big they get. They buy them, toss them in a 180 and plan on upgrading in the future. It's sad how many potential monsters there are on this forum and most will never see 600 gallons, let alone anything close to what they actually need.
People think it's funny when I talk about my 750 gallon grow out tank, but that's the truth, 750 will buy me some time but it's nowhere big enough to house adults of the same species of fish most are keeping here, however I do think most of the fish I currently have could be comfy in a 750 for life, but this is only cause the guys I'm keeping are very good about knowing the limits of the fish tank, and don't try to smash through the sides of the tank like many of these open water preds do. I know someday I'll eventually get my hands on a group of VATF, but if they really get 30+" I might have to reconsider......
I'd love to see evidence of a 30"+ tank raised ATF of ANY variety other than the Goliath. I've seen one 27" brevis, and that's IT. I don't believe that vittatus would truly reach three feet in an aquarium because the world record fish is only 39" long. Even in the wild, the average size of adult vittatus is only 18". A two footer is rare and a 30" fish is exceptional. The WR fish was an old, gravid female. Tanzaniae and brevis are both, IMO, larger species than vittatus despite the fact that larger fish of those specieshasn't been caught yet. This is due to the much heavier fishing pressure on vittatus.
Give it time, a huge TATF or BATF is waiting in the wings. I suspect that a huge one of either of those species will be caught soon. Marc Tower's world record BATF was just caught last year and blew away the old record by almost 20 pounds, but a cursorial search of the internet shows comparably sized brevis all over. They just weren't registered with IGFA. Tourette's fishing specializes in TATF and they routinely catch fish within 2-3 pounds of the world record. As far as I'm concerned, no one's really landed a lunker yet.
Those two species are apex predators in their range, the vittatus is a mesopredator which is supressed by the goliath and big clarias cats in most of its range.
A 27" brevis:
View attachment 897566
There are a few that I have seen that were larger than 24 inches, I'll have to do some searching but someone on here sold one that was 30 inches I'm pretty sure. I'll try to find the link with pics and everything.
Here are a few of the larger ones I have found on the internet though.
This guy here definitely looks to be larger than 24 inches.
[video=youtube;6OCvwspWkFs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OCvwspWkFs[/video]
Let me look a bit on here and see if I can find the for sale thread of the big VATF on here.
ETA: Sorry I was mistaken the video I posted in this post is of the one that was for sale here on MFK by user Darren.c, he claims it was 22" in his for sale thread here. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?458771-Giant-St-Giant-Vittatus&highlight=vittatus
