So yeah, this is a vulture catfish but in their native Venezuela some call it the Machete Catfish, renowned for not releasing it's grip on it's victims even when removed from the water. Sometimes even found alongside cetopsids ripping fish to shreads.
Anyway I like to give a little lesson before getting to my point. I have one of these swiming in my tank as of late yesterday morning. I was told that I could expect a fish of 9-10" in length but as you can see in the photos he is actually over 11" closer to 11.5". About the same length (just a touch longer) than my largest Sun cat, and my ID shark. I hope to have a video uploaded soon of his release. I have taken many pics already as well as several vids. Needless to say after reading up on them for 2 weeks now I was a little worried what might become of my other fish. I bought some silversides, bloodworms, krill, and some floating cichlid pellets to see what he would eat right away. I used a drip acclimation method on this guy for 2 hours. Seems like a long time but my water is extremely hard and didn't want to put the guy into shock. I set up a hose to drip a steady small stream of water in a large cooler. Pretty calm while in the cooler. I measured him and tried to get a look at his teeth as well. When the cooler would get a couple extra inches of water I would scoop the extra water out slowly taking him from the water he came in conditions to my own water's conditions. I also was doing a very slow water change on the tank at the same time and adjusted the flow of water going into the tank to match what was going into the cooler. So for a while I effectively had a constant flow system on my tank lol. Probably only changed about 30 of the 100 gals though. Once I released him he went to the bottom like a rock and sat there maybe 20 mins just taking it all in. When my sun catfishes came out and started exploring him he didn't like it and got up and swam around. After several hours of the fish all checking out each other he found a spot with strong flow and perched there. Later last night I was able to get him to eat enough krill to get his stomach poked out a lil. He didn't eat much though. Was not interested in pellets, silversides, bloodworms, or fish fillet. Very content with krill though. So for now I will try to feed him a little krill each night until he is well settled then will work on getting his diet varied. I hope everyone will enjoy the pics of him and I will try to update this often with his behaviors and such. right now he is housed in a 100 gal aquarium 4' x 2' x 21". It has two large canister filters. One has a 5.5 gal capacity, the other a 2.5 gal capacity. They are mostly filled with biological filter material (nylon pot scrubbers mostly). I have the plans made up for a 400-500 gal pond that I will be putting him into within a few weeks. Money should be availible shortly and will be able to buy up the materials needed. Doing it very cheaply. Pond will be 8'x4'x20". Will use some homeade drop in bucket filters for filtration.
I want to grow this guy out very monster!!! Although many frown upon it eventually when I set up a qtank again I will be testing his predatory capabilities and hopefully recording them. I will use some goldfish and quaratine them for at least 2-4 weeks fatening them up on bloodworms, brine shrimp, ect, while making sure they are free of illness. Only once they have a clean bill of health will I introduce them as potential prey. If he does not eat them I fully plan on keeping them for life so no worries.
Let me know what everyone thinks.
So yeah, this sux btw. So my computer is at Dell being worked on(less than 2 months from purchase) Not only did I have to ship it to them to have it worked on, but they sent me an email last night saying that it might take them up to a month to resolve this issue.
Needless to say I am posting this from the library. Come to find out, to prevent mallicious files being uploaded from library computers they have disabled the features that allow you to upload files here. So I am unable to upload the videos and pics that I took at this time. Guess everyone will have to wait another month or two....... 
Anyway I like to give a little lesson before getting to my point. I have one of these swiming in my tank as of late yesterday morning. I was told that I could expect a fish of 9-10" in length but as you can see in the photos he is actually over 11" closer to 11.5". About the same length (just a touch longer) than my largest Sun cat, and my ID shark. I hope to have a video uploaded soon of his release. I have taken many pics already as well as several vids. Needless to say after reading up on them for 2 weeks now I was a little worried what might become of my other fish. I bought some silversides, bloodworms, krill, and some floating cichlid pellets to see what he would eat right away. I used a drip acclimation method on this guy for 2 hours. Seems like a long time but my water is extremely hard and didn't want to put the guy into shock. I set up a hose to drip a steady small stream of water in a large cooler. Pretty calm while in the cooler. I measured him and tried to get a look at his teeth as well. When the cooler would get a couple extra inches of water I would scoop the extra water out slowly taking him from the water he came in conditions to my own water's conditions. I also was doing a very slow water change on the tank at the same time and adjusted the flow of water going into the tank to match what was going into the cooler. So for a while I effectively had a constant flow system on my tank lol. Probably only changed about 30 of the 100 gals though. Once I released him he went to the bottom like a rock and sat there maybe 20 mins just taking it all in. When my sun catfishes came out and started exploring him he didn't like it and got up and swam around. After several hours of the fish all checking out each other he found a spot with strong flow and perched there. Later last night I was able to get him to eat enough krill to get his stomach poked out a lil. He didn't eat much though. Was not interested in pellets, silversides, bloodworms, or fish fillet. Very content with krill though. So for now I will try to feed him a little krill each night until he is well settled then will work on getting his diet varied. I hope everyone will enjoy the pics of him and I will try to update this often with his behaviors and such. right now he is housed in a 100 gal aquarium 4' x 2' x 21". It has two large canister filters. One has a 5.5 gal capacity, the other a 2.5 gal capacity. They are mostly filled with biological filter material (nylon pot scrubbers mostly). I have the plans made up for a 400-500 gal pond that I will be putting him into within a few weeks. Money should be availible shortly and will be able to buy up the materials needed. Doing it very cheaply. Pond will be 8'x4'x20". Will use some homeade drop in bucket filters for filtration.
I want to grow this guy out very monster!!! Although many frown upon it eventually when I set up a qtank again I will be testing his predatory capabilities and hopefully recording them. I will use some goldfish and quaratine them for at least 2-4 weeks fatening them up on bloodworms, brine shrimp, ect, while making sure they are free of illness. Only once they have a clean bill of health will I introduce them as potential prey. If he does not eat them I fully plan on keeping them for life so no worries. Let me know what everyone thinks.
So yeah, this sux btw. So my computer is at Dell being worked on(less than 2 months from purchase) Not only did I have to ship it to them to have it worked on, but they sent me an email last night saying that it might take them up to a month to resolve this issue.
Needless to say I am posting this from the library. Come to find out, to prevent mallicious files being uploaded from library computers they have disabled the features that allow you to upload files here. So I am unable to upload the videos and pics that I took at this time. Guess everyone will have to wait another month or two....... 
