How To Set Up An Aquarium for Clarias Batrachus or Walking Catfish?

[bestfeed]

Hi, i'm still new in here. I hope you guys can help me to set up an aquarium for clarias batrachus or walking catfish? Have ever heard about it? I afraid maybe some of you don't. Here some of the pics. There are some variations of this species.









How can I set up an aquarium for it? What type of oxygen pump for it? Do I need to add some gravels, sands or driftwood?
And lastly, how many times should I change the water? a week? two weeks? Or a mont?

Please kindly help me to keep this fish; very love to keep it..

 

[Nicko]

Google is your best friend and it will give you loads of care sheets.

I keep this species, they are easy to look after they live in low oxygenated dirty murky waters in the wild (that should tell you alot). They are air breathers so you don't need a air pump (will do fine in low oxygenated water). They like to dig (as most catfish do) so put a substrate in that they can throw about without hurting themselves and they like to hide so a poly tube, driftwood or a pile of immovable rock is a good idea.

also abit of advise they will dig up anything they can so if you wanna use plants i would use ones that grow on other things (i use java fern) although they could still tear it off (mine has done it before) or use potted plants secured with immovable rocks. They will throw and play with anything in the tank so use guards (mine broke a un-guarded heater). And finally they are territorial (and predatory less so as they get bigger) so tank mates are unlikely to work (they sometimes do tho).

hope that helps

 

[the_deeb]

I housed one of these many years ago and I agree with Nicko's advice. They're resilient fish and not particularly fussy about water conditions. I should add that they're excellent escape artists so make sure to have a secure lid. Bigger ones are quite powerful and when mine was about 12" it managed to push off the lid of the tank and go wandering about the house (I was surprised that it survived despite being out of the tank for several hours, but hence the name I suppose).

They're a great monster aquarium fish and I wish they were legal in the US, but their invasive potential is so high that this is one of those cases where I'm inclined to agree with the restrictions.

 

[bestfeed]

Well, this fish doesn't cost me too much on money because it eat almost anything. I have 6 catfish in my aquarium. I just use minimal filter pump which is shape like a sponge..it much more cleaner than the normal one. I hate it when my aquarium becomes cloudy...I can't take a look at it longer.

And they're pretty big eaters..mine just use the pellet. The catfish that I own was a wild one. At the beginning, its not easy to make it feed the pellet. It only length 2 inches and after I mixed it with gouramies and barbs, they start to follow to eat the pellet. Now they are about 25 inches, 3 males and 3 females. All of them have grow up. And they are not aggresive to my gouramies and barbs.

 

[Nicko]

25 inches wow that is big the biggest I've got one of mine to is 16 inches. Do you have any photos of your set up and your catfish? When i had my albino female with a mate she was alright with tank mates but after he died she slaughters anything in the same tank as her. Makes me think they are more likely to accept tank mates when they are in a pair (i reckon they spend there time focusing on each other instead of the other tank mates). What is the foot print of your tank? (I'm curious as to what sort of sizes you need to go to to get that sort of growth)

 

[David Tyson]

Can I grow clarias batrachus on duckweed alone? Not as aquarium fish but food for other huge fish.