... Shovelnose is doing great. Eating great. NLS pellets, hikari carnivore sinking pellets, tubifex and bloodworms, and loves the scent of krill but doesn't feed at the surface
***Excellent. Some say it's hard to willfully wean them onto dry foods like pellets but some are easy. Hard to predict why and how.
Gonna try to get him or her hand feeding so I can do krill.
***Always a wonderful idea both for the fish and for you.
Seems as though this fish is damn near blind and will only eat what the whiskers touch. This is leading to some of the tankmates getting over fed.
***Not it, probably. They are ambush predators. They don't chase food. They wait patiently in ambush mimicking a floating twig and wait for live food to get lulled into a feeling of safety and come too close. Then snap! I find their eyesight to be pretty decent for a catfish. That's in day light. At night it all becomes 100% driven by barbels / whiskers but they do need to hide from all the larger predators looking for food at night too......... Having said that I must add that they do adjust their positions and often come out slowly approaching food thrown into their tank. Depends on the flow too and where the food is going, whether it sits in a pile or is blown around or something in between...
... would love to get more of them but the tank is quite small already. It's a standard 125 with an oscar, 2 sevs, a chocolate, and 2 Raphael cats with him. The two Raphs are going in my brother in laws 75 as soon as his lazy ass gets the filter for it. Everyone's still pretty small.
***IMHO you can get at least 6 of them in there, with your impeccable care, might even get more. They are elongatus (max 1'), not lima (max 2').
... This is also without running carbon in my filters.
***I never have carbon in my filters. It'd be a waste of space for my purposes. Can never have too much bio filtration. No such thing.
... Just didn't know my lighting was too bright for cats.
***I didn't mean your lighting. Spoke in general. Like you said, plants give shade and comfort and shelter. The light brightness importance is much reduced then, not eliminated though.
... I might remove the powerhead. None of the fish really like it now that u mention the flow...
***Surely you realize you will reduce DO, dissolved oxygen. So it's a game of the right and doable balance.
just picked up this "Lima" shovelnose last Wednesday. Hasn't eaten at all until today he's eaten 3 bloodworms.. not much but it's a start. Had to push all the other fish to one side of the tank with my net and drop the worms literally on his face but hey. Whatever works right?
