Healthy bichir feeding habits

[Dr.B]

Hey y'all,

The Delhezi is alive and well. He's still in the 36G bow front tank with the mollies & the teugelsi, and it seems to be going really well. A couple weeks ago, we had as many as 30 baby mollies in the tank. We now have four. The ted & del have polished off quite a few, and the del seems to be taking it in stride. We noticed a couple days he had a prominent bump on his belly but the wound has completely shut itself and no undigested food is coming out of the wound. Almost all of the redness has been dissipated, but he does have a slight indent where a scar looks like it might be forming. He's not entirely healed, but he's making excellent progress. Other than attacking our cute baby mollies, we've been feeding him brine shrimp, very small cut up pieces of krill, beef heart (as a treat, 1-2x month) and cut up massivore pellets - he has a special fondess for those.

He's acting very normal, and seems to be healthy. He lost a noticeable amount of weight through the healing process, but now has a little bit of a belly starting to come back so I see that as a sign that digestion is going as it should, and he's finally receiving valuable nutrients. He and the teugelsi don't show much aggression towards each other, and he hasn't been swimming like a maniac, so I don't think there's been too much stress put on his wound. I got a semi-decent picture and a couple videos of the teugesi and delhezi. Videos are still loading I'll post links later. View attachment 1011847

Awesome I am glad he made it. I would watch him on that substrate though looks kinda sharp. It's awesome he is eating to hopefully he can recover fully, because he is a really nice looking del. I can see the teugelsi photobombing in the background to lol. I'd still watch what I feed him and make sure not to over-do it just to be safe. I'd give it a couple more weeks until I would start really trying to fatten him up. If his wound looks good then I would feed him as much as he will take for a couple days for being such a trooper then I'd gradually die it back down to normal 1-2 times a day.

 

[Smithmode]

Any thoughts on my post from yesterday?

 

[NowFuzzySays]

We've gotten the red worms before, the clown loaches usually swoop them up before the polies can get at them though! And I've heard the same thing about live food. We buy gold fish from the local specialty fish store, and the polies LOVE them! And we also really enjoy watching them get eaten - I've got a couple pretty cool videos of them feeding on YouTube

We also sometimes keep a couple ghost shrimp in there, which usually get eaten within a day or two of being in the tank. Haven't tried crickets or earth worms before though.

 

[NowFuzzySays]

Any thoughts on my post from yesterday?

Honestly, not really sure. From the pictures it's hard to tell, but the bump doesn't look too severe. My advice would be to hold off on feeding for a while to see if he's able to pass it. Polies really gorge themselves at times - our newest endlicheri (7") just ate our little senegal (3.5"), and his belly was HUGE! But he seems to be ok now so the little stone might be nothin for him!


Dr. B might have some better advice for you, though.

 

[NowFuzzySays]

I had an ornate bichir die because of the barb on the clown loach he was eating got stuck in his throat. In my opinion bichirs and loaches are a bad combo.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

If the loaches are significantly smaller than the bichirs, I'd agree with you. We have three medium and two small loaches, and at times I worry about the smaller loaches. However, I am a little intrigued by the recent activity of our endlicheri endlicheri...

So for a day or two, we had ran out of goldfish and hadn't re-upped the supply in the tank. One morning, my boyfriend wakes me up in a panic because when he looked in the tank, our endlicheri endlicheri (approx 7") had our little senegal (3.5") 3/4 of the way down his throat! He said it looked like the senegal was already dead at this time, so there wasn't anything he could do.

At the time this happened, we had those five clown loaches, and a dwarf gourami in the tank. My question is - why the heck did the endlicheri go after the senegal when it had the option to go after the smaller fish? The senegal he ate was perfectly healthy, he was just a runt. Do you think it's because the loaches and gourami were too fast for the endlicheri? Or does he just know not to go after the loaches or something? I just was astounded - but the endli is the biggest poly in the tank and has grown the fastest.

It also makes me nervous because we recently got an ornate poly who is only slightly bigger than the senegal was. In theory, as long as we keep a readily available food source for the endli the ornate should be ok, right? Or do you think we should separate him until he's a little bigger? Losing the senegal wasn't a huge deal because he was $10 at petsmart, but the ornate was closer to $60, and he's much prettier, so it'd be quite a bummer if he became lunch.

Let me know your thoughts!