Payara captive care guide
- Thread starter xander
- Start date
I agree with that any of these fish are not for a beginner. I think that it is a little crazy for someone to think that just because they raised one fish to a certain size or time length makes the thousands internet wide claims of the scomb death rate untrue or a myth. i have been at this game for 20 years and i have never seen or heard of a scomb living for very long. i have tried with 8-10 of them myself and many different set-ups and they always die. So maybe i just don't have what it takes and then i guess no one else does either. I would love for someone to figure them out mainly cause they are the cheapest and most abundant of all payara in the aquarium trade. i would dare to call them the goldfish of the payara just no one can keep them alive
how big are ur rhaphs now? i grew mine to 12" fairly easily.DB junkie;2031638; said:
im not sure if the rhaph i saw was imported large or not. i figured it grew out in the there since he was in such a large tank and he was very calm.
vamptrev;2034732; said:
What happened after they hit a foot? I'de say mine is right around a foot. I only have 1 left... Only ever had 2. The smaller of the 2 was killed by one of my rays. Took me almost 4 years to get it that big..... Mine has recently developed a bad attitude since being cut loose in the pond. Relentlessly chasing the gar (one jumped out after being in the pond since it had water in it) the other just sits in the corner now. Honestly I don't even like looking down on that Rhaph anymore. You can take a stick and hold it over the water, if its less than 6 inches from the surface he goes for it.
JD7.62;2030990; said:
Man, sounds like an A W S O M E set up
Are there any pics on MFK?
Back to the Armatus... Since there was a lot of baby (2" under) recently bought, I think there should be a ID (atleast pics) of small Armatus/Tats/any other Payara mentioned on the final thread.
I am only saying this caouse I did not see any pics of Juvis
Gonna be kinda tough since no one has pics of Tats that small. Kinda hard to explain how to tell the difference in 2 fish when you only have pics of 1. The care guide will be getting some more info contributed over the next week or so. What we need is someone with experience in the under 2inch Tat dept.
DB junkie;2035105; said:
they got murdered by jungle parasite guard
they hit a foot in 2 yrs but i never got them off feeders.there will be a few pics of each vamp, but only only pics where the diff traits are very distinguishable.
any more ideas?
Breaking Payara off live food....I would recommend attempting to train your payara off live food at an early age. I have had better luck with them learning this at a young age. It seems the older they get the more stubborn they get. The last batch I have obtained was a pack of 5 Armatus at roughly the size of a quarter. They were actually to small to even eat rosies (or tuffies) so they were fed guppies up until about 2 inches. At that point they were switched to rosies. Kept on rosies for about another 1-1.5 inches. I believe I made a mistake in how long I fed rosies. I believe you may have better luck getting them off live if you are to start feeding goldfish as soon as they are big enough to eat them. This will greatly increase your chances in getting them to go after krill as they are both orange in color, and the shape of freeze dried krill has more in common with goldfish then a rosie does. I believe with Artmatus as soon as they have been on goldfish for a few weeks they are ready to be trained completely off live. This coincidently happened to be the same time the white edging began showing up in my little guys..... If I was to have another attempt at this I would actually start them as soon as the adipose fin was bright enough to be 100% armatus or about 4 inches. I believe they are hardy enough at this size. Although I didn't start mine till about 5-6 inches just to insure they were hardy enough. I began thier training with the same methods I used to break my Rhaphiodons, Scombs, and Tats. Now I had allready transfered them from thier 75 gallon growout tank to a 180 gallon tank. They had been in the 180 and on goldfish for about 3 weeks. I believe I would have saw better results if I began trying to feed them the krill while they were still in the growout 75. They seemed to have so much room that they were able to ignore the krill due to the size of the tank. Quick bit on the tankmates they were in with... A few rapheal cats to clean up left over food. 1 6 inch PTC. 1 4 inch Hujeta gar 1 3inch spotted gar. A 5 inch Marbled Motoro stingray (I believe if your fish are not the the same length as the rays disk width they are at risk of being attacked by the ray) First method was to simply drop freeze dried krill into the output of the hang on back filter. I run AC 110s on my tanks so this was enough water movement to make the krill dance around and mimic a live feeder goldfish. This was done every morning and at night. By about the 3rd day of this they began rushing or charging the krill. But NO attempts to eat it were being made. By this time they were allready looking a little skinny but likely due to the rapid goldfish eating they were used to. I decided to try anoth means of feeding. I took a normal fishing hook and clipped the barb off the end and straightened the hook. I then took a piece of thawed smelt and cut just the tail end off (about an inch) and put it on the hook. It looked suprisingly like a rosie. So this may be a way to skip the goldfish all together. This would seem to me to be ideal as feeding a payara krill will get VERY expensive very fast. The smelt was dangled in front of a powerhead to make it "dance" around and mimic a live fish. they pretty much ignored this the first few days but soon the same charging began. But like the krill no attepts were being made to actually eat it. The same charging went on for around a week. So here I am about a week and a half in from the last time these lil buggers ate. they all looked really skinny now and I decided to take another corse of action. A "teacher" fish. I couldn't understand how my other payara would just take the krill and these guys wouldn't. I believe this reason was the absence of another fish in the tank swimming at the same level in the water column and eating the krill in front of the little Armatus. Showing them it was food. So I brought up my 12inch Rhaphiodon Vulpinus from the pond. This very fish was always in the tanks with my other payara when they began eating krill. I belive it attributed to the breaking of not only other Rhaphs but Scombs, Tats, and my first Armatus. Now that the Armatus were roughly 5 inches I felt it was safe enough to add the big Rhaph. It did not eat the first day due to the stress from moving. The second day he began eating krill. I believe Rhaph make exceptional teacher fish cause of the "backflip" they do when they eat. Very difficult for this to go unnoticed by the other fish in the tank. During this time the Armatus began biting the krill but quickly spitting it back out. I then fed the Rhaph a huge piece of smelt. It took him about 5 minutes to get it down. During this time it swam the entire tank while trying to swallow it. The next attempt with the fishing hook and a small piece of cut smelt for the Armatus was a success. They are just now (2 weeks later) starting to catch the pieces of smelt on the way down (without the fishing hook/line) and 1 of the Armatus is still refusing to eat. I'm sure after watching his other 4 tankmates devoure smelt he will quickly catch on. So in my case I believe I confirmed that a "teacher" fishes' presence is a huge asset in breaking payara off live food. The "teacher" fish was only in the tank for a few days and the Armatus began eating. I have also used Dats and even made an attempt to use a small silver dat in breaking these fish. Dats work well I believe for the same reason the Rhaphs do, when they charge the surface from the bottom it is very fast and again hard for other fish to ignore. But I ended up moving this particular dat in fear of it snatching the eye of one of the Armatus. It has a history of pecking feeder fishes eyes out and after it took the spotted gars I wasn't going to risk it happening to an Armatus. I have also heard silver arros work as well. I believe West1 used one as a teacher to break his Tats. I hope my experiences with getting these fish OFF live food can be an asset to people who are trying to achieve this same difficult task. As many of you keeping payara know that ich and possibly other diseases can be easily transfered from feeder fish to your prized specimens. Soon your payara will recognize you as a food source and will happily greet you when you enter the room in anticipation for a piece of food. Good luck and happy payara keeping!!!
I just wanted to add my very limited experience. I had a 6" Tat for about 4 months or so. It got beat up a lot in a tank that had aggressive fish, but no problems with any other fish that weren't large enough to be eaten. It was ultimately killed by tankmates although it was doing a lot better the second time I put it in with tankmates and didn't seem to be getting beaten up badly, but was found dead floating after I had gone away for a couple days. It took a lot of time (probably 3 months, including quarantine) and patience to get it off of live food, but it finally succame.
