Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii aka dorado catfish, 4"

[thebiggerthebetter]

... Anyhow, down to two dorados from Mark Chen. These have been doing ok.

Until recently...

So my story titled "I can't keep Brachyplatystoma rosseauxii (and juruense)" lives on.

One of Mark's fish started losing balance and spinning and died... in the same fashion as all of them that died in my "care" died, except two predatory attacks by a gulper and by a piraiba, as described above.

(The superficial damage in the photos is not the cause of death.)

 

[moe214]

Sorry to hear bro

 

[dudefish82]

Sorry to hear they seem quite hard to keep

 

[jaws7777]

Sorry about the losses viktor. Any idea whats causing the difficulties? Specifically with the juruense

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thanks, guys.

It looks to me at this point as a bacterial or viral infection, to which their immune system can't find the key. Sooner or later they succumb to it. The same with firewood catfish.

The pathogen sources can be thought of as multiple. From the very diverse and great many tank mates and system mates (fish from other tanks on the same filter) to Hurricane Irma blowing all kinds of native water mist around and into my tanks and filters, to an occasional aquatic frog finding a way from the wild into the sump.

 

[domdes]

I feel your pain, I to have had 3 from Mark & the longest I've kept alive was 6 months and got one from Batfish and it to only lasted 3 months and died.

 

[suckerfish]

The joys of keeping fish. Live and learn I guess. Question, on your last pic, looks like small sharp teeth??

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thanks, guys. D domdes do you have a thread on your dourada catfish attempts? How do they die? Any ideas on the causes?

Yeah, the teeth look sharp in that pic. I've never given it much thought. The tooth patches look about the same as with most catfish but I need to read up on this. Good catch. The teeth are nothing like those of a wallago catfish but perhaps they are sharper than usual. I don't know yet.

 

[Chicxulub]

Wow, that thing does look to have some gnarly teeth. What a surprise! I always like to learn of formidable dentition.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

An update on 2 dourada catfish (and one B. capapretum).

I've been having horrible luck with the dourada catfish. Probably over the last year or two I tried about 10 of them, at some point having 6 all at one time. Two were lost to predatory attacks by a gulper (missed the size disparity that creeped up on me because of different growth rate) and, totally unexpectedly, by a piraiba. The rest succumbed to some unknown to me disease, wherein they start spinning and swimming funny and never recover, some within weeks, others after many months. Currently have two in this tank section - one from Mark Chen of Discus Origins at ~5" and one from snookn21 at ~3.5".

As a result of these troubles, I became convinced that I must grow out dourada separately or with the meekest of tank mates to have any shot at raising them to size. Sad to report that after all these attempts, my biggest fish didn't exceed 7"-8".

The story with false piraiba, aka B. capapretum, is pretty similar except that I have not lost any yet - only ever worked with two and, miraculously, still have them, one 2-year old at ~2' and the other that I got this spring, featured in this video, at ~7". But they are very skittish and very touchy and too meek with other tank mates and stress way easily, just like dourada are.

So with capa too, I decided I must by all means try to raise them solo or with most gentle tank mates. In any case, IME and IMO dourada and capa catfish require a LOT more vigilance and observation than others to catch problems in time.