If you kept or keep tigs, what'd you think of the 10x4m or 33x13ft recommended tank size?

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

thebiggerthebetter: split off from a different thread. The first 4 posts are on Platisilurus mucosus catfish, then we go to the tigs:

...

I thought this fish needed a tank size designed for its total length+its whiskers acting as the length of the fish to give its whiskers room? One of the reasons I've never had one.

 

[kno4te]

This little guy is in a 210g.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

I see. Adding the whisker length to the total length would make the fish >60cm long at adult size and too big for a 795 liter.

But if what I've heard about the whiskers needing to be factored in wasn't correct, this fish has a nice spacious 795 liter!

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I am aware of this barbel length need for the more or less hard-barbelled catfish, that can control their barbels along their entire or almost entire length.

I am not aware of this for the fish with soft, long, flowing barbels, fin extensions, etc. which can't be controllably moved, e.g. Brachyplatystoma & Platisilurus.

If anyone had evidence of this being a problem for the soft-barbelled cats, I'd appreciate to learn as always.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Brachyplatystoma

I think it is considered to be a problem with Seriously Fish's zebra shovelnose keepers. They recommend a 10x4 meter footprint for zebra shovelnose as a starting point, which (although not explicitly stated) makes sense when the length of the fish is added to the length of the tail streamers.

Base dimensions of 1000 * 400 cm or equivalent are required for long-term care.

Brachyplatystoma tigrinum – Zebra Shovelnose — Seriously Fish

www.seriouslyfish.com

Edit: Having never kept zebra shovelnose I'm probably not as qualified to comment as some, so take this for what you will. But this may nonetheless be relevant.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

"Long term care" doesn't equate "starting point", in fact they are the opposites.

33 feet x 13 feet footprint to keep an adult ~2.5' tig catfish would seem unreasonable to me. They are a largely sedentary fish, swimming occasional laps. You may say it is because I've never kept them in a large enough tank. Fair. enough. Ours was only 16x6.5ft. It is also fair to ask for hard data that this is indeed beneficial and not simply made up.

When five-to-ten different peers report different (and deemed better) tig behavior in their 33x13ft vs five-to-ten others keeping their tigs in, let's say, 12x6, I'd believe it. But this is utopia. There may be only a few peers on the planet who keep tigs in anything comparable to a 30x10ft (I am not counting murky ponds) and they may not be on any forums.

To give hard numbers, one must have hard data, because general considerations are useless, they have no use... according to them a fish should be best given such spacious quarters that the fish cannot tell its "tank" from its natural habitat and its size, Amazon in this case. So I'd say why not give every tig a 60,000ft x 600ft circle with 100,000 gallon per hour flow, featuring both rapids and 50ft deep quiet pools and littered with dead trees and car size boulders?

And that's for a fish that doesn't migrate. If a fish migrates 20 to 2000 miles, forget it altogether.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

"Long term care" doesn't equate "starting point", in fact they are the opposites.

I see. I was equating starting point to 'the smallest appropriate/recommended tank size', which is usually what Seriously Fish gives.

It is also fair to ask for hard data that this is indeed beneficial and not simply made up.

I'm just guessing here, but it may be that the fish is significantly more relaxed if it is able to have a good turning/swimming radius with the streamers etc, fully extended, as opposed to having to bend them and/or touch them against tank walls whenever it does so. That may not be hard data, but at least it makes sense.

Whether or not the rest is true isn't something I can judge. The Seriously Fish recommendation was just the closest thing I had found, but still that's a fair explanation on why you disagree.

Edit 2: This might not have been clear from my first comment, but I was only pointing out that Seriously Fish may feel tank sizes should be recommended based on streamers, what fish it was for, and what tank size it was, since the genus Brachyplatystoma was mentioned. Not advocating it for the zebra shovelnose, I have no real opinion on tank size for zebra shovelnose.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

That may not be hard data, but at least it makes sense.

Be that as it may but what I had just tried to say, general sense-making is useless in my humble opinion. I humbly think the 1,000,000 gal tank for the tig I proposed also makes sense. On paper. Peta people who say let all animals go, also make their kind of twisted sense, on paper.

Now what you said is indeed a logical way of thinking and is something desirable but without hard data, it leads nowhere. Logic is a necessary but insufficient condition, rigorously mathematically speaking. Logic must be rooted firmly in knowledge and data, otherwise the same healthy logic and common sense easily lead to absurdity.

I am actually blown away by the Seriously Fish recommendation. (I think it is politically motivated, so the following breaking(?) of the MFK rules is not my fault..) No one can afford a 33x13ft fish tank. 1 in a billion people don't count. So tig keeping is only for the richest of the rich? So we the joe-shmoes can't do it? The lower cast, the slaves of the rich and powerful? ... Let's follow through farther. The green planet and animal-loving people say meat is unnecessary and a luxury and soon will be available only to few and to commoners like us only once or twice a year. What does your logic say where this is all heading? I'll tell you - to us having no freedoms, corralled, stupefied, raised and treated like animals.

... Do you know how powerful peta is? They bent over Facebook, IG, Twitter for instance. Piece of cake. You can't post a picture on FB holding or touching or netting your fish, it's a propaganda of cruelty according to them. Seriously Fish is nobody and can be erased or bent over by peta or be threatened far easier than the social media giants. This is also logic. On paper.

In fact MFK is nobody too but is one of the ever diminishing places online where our freedoms have not been taken away as fast as in other places.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

So that's what you meant by 'hard'. Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

No one needs to listen to me.

I already gave an example of hard data when I described an experiment of keeping tigs in 33x13 vs 12x6 and comapring behavior, longevity, size, appetite, attempts to breed, etc. that is biology.

In fact, it'd be nice to throw an 8x4 in there for good measure.