i have many years of experience with large cats mostly rtcs,shovel nose, and artc never had any problems rasing them to 3ft plus minus the artc witch seems to die every time just short of 3ft witch i cant explain why they always die for unknown reasons . i definitely hope to raise the cat to a heathly size 3ft or more hopefully , but with little known in the aquarium trade i can see some unforeseen issues i may have to over come, ill keep those posted on the cats growth for those who wish to see updates on the slobber
Just this week I've lost our 34", 5 year old, completely healthy-looking ARTC. This is so eerily similar to your comment! Makes me really wonder why? If you have any input, like if yours died abruptly and for no discernible reason, illness, etc. just like mine has, please, chime in my ARTC thread: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...mibagrus-wyckioides-mr-crankypants-16.678397/

It goes without saying that we need people, MFKers to follow through on their threads from start to finish on each fish they find worthy to report on. This is how we all learn together, do homework, and build up the MFK. Quality threads is our foundation, otherwise it is all just so shallow and worthless in the aftermath. So many MFKers miss that and treat MFK as an SMS / chat room service or FB, IG, Twitter, etc., which is fine and has its place too but is not and can never be the foundation of any serious and long lived, competitive hobby site.
IMHO, we are facing MFK extinction just like many other fish sites. In a way similar to the Mom and Pop fish stores that have been largely replaced by faceless, boring chain stores, so MFK, Planet Catfish, and Co will be swept away by the mainstream social media.
Sorry, I got carried away. This is directed at all, not you. Yes, please, I would dearly, dearly love to learn about slobber rearing through you.
I envy you guys in the states with the prices and species available. A tig here in sweden cost over 5000sek wich is over 500usd. Last time i saw a tig on the lists it costed 6400sek for 25-30cm fish
From the prices I read about in the UK, EU markup must be multiple times that in the USA. I wonder who makes that doubled, tripled, or quadrupled profit, at which point in the fish delivery to consumer. Government through customs duty, taxation?