I've got a 10in + buttikoferi in my 180. With a pacu 10in+ and super red dragon flowerhorn. They are eating close to 50 goldies a week with the hikari pellets. Some carrots and the occasional blood worm. They all eat about the same. Except the buttikoferi eats. I can't for the life of me think of the name of the little lobster looking thangs I put in there but a couple of them a week and a couple nutts for the pacu a week also. But all in all the buttikoferi. Manily seems to favor live food. In my tank. Healthy as can be. Just know yours will get big and if you value your investments they better be highly agressive or have great hiding places. My buttikoferi will move rocks to get to some of the smaller 4-5 in lm's I have in there oh also have a 8in electric blue jack. That's the buttikoferis favorit punching bag
feeding a buttikoferi
- Thread starter bigriver
- Start date
My 7" butti eats market shrimp, freeze-dried shrimp and 2" mill worms in one gulp. He's chubby. Wish mine stays not as aggressive as they say about buttis but I I am willing to part with him once he starts terrorizing my tank. Probably in 2 months time. 
Years ago I visited a hunt camp in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. They had four hippos in a man-made pond of about 10 acres; no natural inflow or outflow, all water supplied by pumping it up from deep underground. The owner told me they did virtually no water changes, just kept it topped up. Water was opaque with algae and liquified hippo poop, no other aquatic plants. A colony of Buttis lived in there, subsisting on...well, the only thing available. Never saw any snails, never thought to ask. They could be caught on hook and line, using small chunks of meat for bait; I think they would have bit on bare hooks just to escape that pond. But, they were big and fat and looked healthy on that diet.
