Bottom for catfish

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Kobeclone

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 25, 2007
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Kansas
Ok, I have been seriously contemplating stocking my 300 gallon with a lima shovelnose or two. Right now I have a silver arowana and a small school( 5 ) of silver dollars. Right now my tank is bare bottomed. Should I add substrate for my lima shovelnose? Do they prefer it one way or the other or do they care?

I apoligize if this question has been asked before, because it sounds like a very simple, frequently asked question, but I did not find this question. Thanks.
 
nah u dont really need substrate..it gives a lot of problems when u clean the tank and it collects waste in the tank which adds to the ammonia levels. really not worth it in the long term cause catfish dont seem to care much. dont b sorry for asking questions :)
 
I would disagree, but I have never had a bare bottom tank. I know my cats and cichlids enjoy the gravel or sand, whichever tank you are talking about, but I do not know if the would "dislike" a bare bottom tank. To me I think it is more natural, and they wouldn't be staring at a reflection of theirselves at all angles, but mostly, IMO I think a tank with something for a substrate just looks better, so it will probably end up coming down to what you think is best. I don't think it is that much extra work to vac the gravel out, in comparison to what it does for the look of my tanks...
 
While I don't know if its necessary, my cats love to dig around in the gravel, I really don't think that my ARTC would be comfortable in bare bottom tank, seeing as it digs new pits all the time. As far as cleaning it goes, keep the substrate fairly shallow and use a gravel vac or python, you should be fine. Bare bottom is less maintenance, but not near as good looking IMO.
 
I agree that it doesn't look as good, but with the tank I will have set up in a few months I am not sure either. It will either be extremly large rocks or nothing at all I still have to decide! I guess if I put powerheads in the right areas I should be fine though.
 
I'll chip my 2 cents here, though my experience is with much smaller cats, mostly around 5-7". Aesthetics aside, my guys seem to love the murky bottom of my plant tank. It's about 4" of mixed florite and black beauty with a layer of largish river rock over it as a mulm trap (it's called plant food in my little universe).

At night you can see the catfish endlessly combing the bottom of the tank in search of food. It's tough to say if they are succesful in finding much worth eating since it seems to be mostly feces on those bad days when I have to disturb the rock, but it allows them to act out thier natural instincts to scavenge and hunt the bottom. I'm not sure if this could be succesfully replicated on the scale a real monster cat would require, but it's a thought.
 
My cats also seem to enjoy sifting through the substrate.I started my 300 bare but after about two weeks i started adding gravle and sand.Let me tell you its much easier to add substrate without water or fish in the tank
 
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