Electric catfish

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HugeGhost

Candiru
MFK Member
Mar 28, 2006
375
4
48
California
I have a nice one 16 inches and living large! Anybody know if he can actually have any tankmates! Seems he is really terretorial in his 60 gallon and zaps everything, plecos raphaels he lets a school of danios have the time of there lives since i am always feeding them vitamin soked food hoping the catfish eats one hahahaha anybody has a big one of these how long will he live, he might outlive me
 
you will get a varied response on this. electric catfish are full of personallity. i have found a ten inch one that is ok to put with neons! Mine was'nt aggresive, just full of curiosity. He would come to the tank only for me. I trained it to literally swim through rings for food, and to lay in the palm of my hand without shocking me until i snapped my fingers with my free hand. he did eat small livebearers, a dojo loach, and a thin 3" melanochromis auratus african cichlid. I would say no, because plecos and rapheals are some of the toughest ones you can get, and if they don't work ,then it looks like it will be a solo tank
 
The synodontis specie catfish are all okay with them. I believe they are immune to the shock and kept 2 species of synodontis catfish (multipunctatus and flavitaeniatus) with my 10" e cat for 6 months or so until I had a really bad tank crash. He never messed with any of them and they are native to the same river systems so its logical for them to be able to cohabitate. Mine never shocked me and they are really curious as its been said. My E cat played with the bubbles off the airstone all the time as well as it would swim up almost touching my hand when I cleaned the tank but never close enough to shock me. Please post pics if you've got them of the 16" electric cat, I would love to see one that big and you'd probably be the person online with the biggest E cat that I know of by far. Heres a pic of mine ~Trent

jimmy4.jpg
 
You should probably upgrade to at least a 100 gallon if not bigger soon because a 60 is way to small for a 16" E cat
 
I will post some pics soon! Thats some great advice on the catfish about co tank mates! Mine has always been alone in that tank with 2 fluvals 403's and the best of everything for him! I have had the guy for over 10 years also! keep in touch, this weekend i will try the syn cats and see if it works!
 
Good luck man, let me know how it works for you, I probably would recommend the multipunctatus or decorus species over the flavitaeniatus because they were less aggressive but all in all they are still peacefull. Its good to see a happy E cat keeper, there aren't many of us but there are a few, post pics when you can! ~Trent
 
BTW what type of tank decor and substrate are you using? I would recommend a finer substrate, the sand I had in the pic was really nice but kinda pricy and the E cats prefer rock over wood from what I've heard but mine loved that huge piece of driftwood and also hung out in the limestone cave I built in the tank as well.
 
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