Are bichirs good at cleaning up the left over food?

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awesum

Feeder Fish
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Feb 21, 2006
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From your experience, are bichirs good at cleaning up the left over food?

I was gonna buy another catfish, but I've had bad luck with them. It seems like pleco's and catfish have a really hard time surviving in my tank. So I'm looking at an alternative in getting a bichir. I heard they are pretty hardy and can defend themselves if a tankmate gets too wild with them.

Do Bichirs go up to the top of the tank to grab food too?
 
What are the inhabitants of this tank?
 
Depends what you're feeding. My polypterus endlicheri and ornatipinnis are great at cleaning up excess of what they like, whether it be shrimp, cut fish or squid, but won't touch anything else leftover like pellets and stuff.
 
awesum;544383; said:
I was gonna buy another catfish, but I've had bad luck with them. It seems like pleco's and catfish have a really hard time surviving in my tank. So I'm looking at an alternative in getting a bichir. I heard they are pretty hardy and can defend themselves if a tankmate gets too wild with them.
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Most catfish are pretty hardy and plecos are indestructible (in my experience). My bichirs do eat almost anything and they're little pigs, but maybe you should first find out what was killing your other fish before you buy some new ones.

Just my 2c...
 
Well i've had fish for over 8 years. I have not been able to keep bottom dwellers for more than 1 month except for 1 catfish.

about 4 years ago i setup a 240 gallon.

Here are my inhabitants:
16" Arowana (1x)
24" black Arowana (1x)
4-7" Uaru A. (5x)
6" D. Sexfasciutus (1x) <---is that how you spell it
8" Green severum (1x)
5" Wild severum (1x)
5" Red severum (1x)
5" Gold severum (1x)
8" Rotkeil Severum (1x) <--- for sale anyone?
4" Widebar dat (2x)

These are the catfishes and pleco's that have lost their lives in my 240 gallon tank:
Common Pleco (7") <-----yes a common pleco died in my tank, how odd is that?
Gold Nugget Pleco (5")
Tiger Pleco (7")
Red Tail Catfish (6")
Tiger Shovel Nose Catfish (12") <---this fish is the longest lasting of all the bottom dwellers (3 years)
Lima Shovel Nose Catfish (10")
Tigrinus Catfish (10") <---the death of this one broke my heart. the 4th biggest lost in my tank.
Jurenese Catfish (4")

All these fishes were not too big to fit in any of my fishes mouths during the time I've had them. I've even seperated some of them with a divider.

My water quality is 0 across the nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia charts. My PH is 6.0. I do water changes every other week. I feed every other day (with the tigrinus and jurense i hand fed them shrimp).

My filtration is a 30 gallon wet/dry with more bio balls than it is suppose to hold, and a fluval fx5 with all 3 baskets filled with ceramic rings.

I spend the whole day acclimating each new fish using the drip method because I know a lot of fish stores and people I buy fish from have higher PH.

Now when these fish die, I've yet to see an injury on them. My fish don't even pick on the dead fish when they die.

I feed all kinds of pellets 95% of the time, dried shrimp 2%, crickets 2%, market prawns 1%.

So now I think a bichir might be able to survive in their. That is if it will eat pellets too. I don't have a problem feeding them shrimp, but I'd prefer my fish to eat pellets. I don't feed my fish feeders at all. They probably never seen a feeder.

Sorry for this long post.
 
What is the substrate in the tank?
 
it went from medium size substrate to bare bottom. For the first two years of having my 240 w/ substrate, i had rediculous ammonia levels. Then i took out the substrate, and now my ammonia levels are at 0.

I have a lot of black lava rock that covers more than half the bottom floor of my tank. My tank size is 8'x2'x2' and i have 3 2' long size driftwood and two aquaclear 70 powerheads w/ detachable sponge filter cartridges.
 
got 9 bichirs, and a lot of datnoids.... feed them with market shrimp and they are hardy fish i would say. have some gravel around .75-.5" of it across my 6x2x2 tank. they do eat all the leftover's but if they are full they won't touch it. when i mean full they are bulging with shrimps in there belly.:D
 
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