General Care

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
M

Masta Flan

Candiru
MFK Member
Feb 19, 2007
156
5
48
Houston,Tx
I think we should have a sticky on top for a general care of these fish. For some reason, this is the only fish I cannot take care of :irked: . I Love how these fish looks like but it seems almost imposible growing them. I got my old ornate to eat little feeder once but for some reason the sucker just died :confused:. I did temperature changes to what not but nothing works. I am thinking of starting all over again and I am wondering if anyone would be nice enough to give me a list of:

Temperature
Food (when they are small and bigger)
Tank environment (ie. plants substrate)
Filtration
Water PH
Any Special Care: (ie vitamins? :cry: )
 
Masta Flan;720466; said:
I think we should have a sticky on top for a general care of these fish. For some reason, this is the only fish I cannot take care of :irked: . I Love how these fish looks like but it seems almost imposible growing them. I got my old ornate to eat little feeder once but for some reason the sucker just died :confused:. I did temperature changes to what not but nothing works. I am thinking of starting all over again and I am wondering if anyone would be nice enough to give me a list of:

Temperature
Food (when they are small and bigger)
Tank environment (ie. plants substrate)
Filtration
Water PH
Any Special Care: (ie vitamins? :cry: )
Click to expand...

i keep temp at 78 to 82 or around there

shrimp pellets are good with a BIG variety(feeders,mealworms,bloodworms, etc.)

sand and plants

enough

as close to 7 as you can get

you gotta love 'em plenty
 
The sad thing is i did everything stated but i didnt have any luck. they eat good in the LFS but when i take them home, everything goes to the pewper
 
You said you were feeding it feeders before it died? That could be the reason why it died. Feeders usually carry diseases which could transfer to your fish if not quarantined properly before feeding. And why were you doing temperature changes? Temps should be kept stable as much as possible. You can raise it up a bit to raise metabolism but it should never swing up and down rapidly. Bichirs in general are very hardy fish. They're one of the least demanding fish I've kept so far.
 
i never changed the temp of my birchir, and for the feeder fish , its usually the same as i fed my arows. meh, maybe next time i'll try a bit harder or probably just keep 1 birchir in teh tank
 
In my experience (which isn't much, 2 senegals), they're pretty easy and hardy fish. I've been recently treating the tank for Ich and did the Salt/Temp method. They for the most part don't really mind the difference. Well at least one of them doesn't. They're in a 55 Gal and seem to be growing very rapidly.

One point though, their behaviour/growth/colour vary quite alot from one senegal to the next, at least for me. During the salt/heat treatment my aggresive senegal grew alot thicker in a week while the other one didn't grow at all. The larger one decided to go super agro too and bit the guts out of my poor clown loaches (It literally bit the stomach off, ate it and then bit chunks off, until they were gone). I even isolated my last one but this morning it either jumped out of his temporary breeder cage or my bichir went in, ate it and ran off... :(

Anyways, I got them both at the same time, same place and one is clearly growing alot faster, is alot meaner, and also, looks alot better. She has a nice pale colour opposed to the normal darker one. Just to say that they're personalities are quite different. Maybe you had suicidal polys. Hiding places seem to help though, a nice rock cave or a log.

Zinq
 
hmmm.. reading around here makes me want a poly more. it seems that they have some crazy personalities and i love how they look. i was just discouraged by the 3 poly's i had that died thats why i havent had the guts to buy another one
 
They also seem pretty immune to Ick, at least from what I can see. The polys that have been living with the "Icky" Loaches don't show any visible signs. In addition, when the Agro poly ate 2 of the loaches, she developed no signs either. Pretty resilient...

Zinq
 
These fish are easy to care for because of their ability to breath air. If the water parameters are not to their liking theyll just get more air from the surface. You dont have to feed these guys daily either. I do though, one day i let them enjoy the bloodworms along with some of my other fishies and the next day ill give them a nice meaty snacks to fill their bellies. I find their favourite foods are smelt... when i throw one of these frozen fishies in they go nuts tryin to find it. Also they love live earth worms and they are good to feed sometimes because it makes them poop like crazy which cleans up their intestines a bit. i find they dont really like cockels though...
I dont feed any of my fish processed food accept for the oscars... its not natural for them to be eating balls in the wild so why should they have to in a tank...
 
Flan, avoid feeding feeders. Yes, we may find it pleasing when our bichirs go feeder hunting at night but these cheap a**, disease-carrying fishes are,more often than not, the source of various pathogens that eventually lead to deaths. Learned that the hard way... 3 times.:cry:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom