Picky Giraffe

[RemainVayne]

One of my 3 (1 wittei and 2 congo) giraffes seems to be quite a picky eater. This congo is a couple inches smaller than the other 2 as he exhales the majority of ingested food through his gills.

I feed many types of pellets as well as fish filets. The only thing he seems to truly eat are live worms. I have had these giraffes for about 3 months now and they currently live in my 360g. I must be doing something right as he has grown about an inch in these 3 months, but is falling behind in size to the other 2.

Any ideas what may be going on or what I could do?

 

[Rob909]

I had a fire eel that only ate live worms. I ended up putting a live worm in a small cup of water with a frozen shrimp and let it thaw with the worm.
I cut the shrimp into long thin slivers (worm sized)
Then I’d break the worm in half, and squeeze the innards onto the shrimp. I’d rub it all over the shrimp and wiggled it in front of the eel.
Took a couple weeks to get the fire eel on strait shrimp but now, it goes crazy for shrimp.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Hard to say in these scenarios as this is no obvious matter. Could be its personality, or its prior diet, or its place in the pecking order, or some other kind of stress, like its immune system is still working out the new bugs the fish is exposed to in your tank (every tank has its own fauna of pathogens), or an internal parasite, or...?

FWIW, with just words and no photos, I'd guess all three or yours are wittei as wittei hails from Congo, solely or not IDK, but seems mostly at least.

 

[RemainVayne]

Hard to say in these scenarios as this is no obvious matter. Could be its personality, or its prior diet, or its place in the pecking order, or some other kind of stress, like its immune system is still working out the new bugs the fish is exposed to in your tank (every tank has its own fauna of pathogens), or an internal parasite, or...?

FWIW, with just words and no photos, I'd guess all three or yours are wittei as wittei hails from Congo, solely or not IDK, but seems mostly at least.

I did quarantine the trio and treated with prazipro, so hopefully that helped some. And I hadn't thought of the pecking order...

I'll snap some pics for you as the one labeled wittei definitely has different markings than the 2 who came in as Occidentalis, but we all know how much patterns can (or can't) mean when it comes to giraffes. And I know all you catfish nerds love all the pics you can get!

 

[Tobiassorensen]

The wittei i used to have exhaled prob around 2/3 of the food through its gills everytime but did grow about 10cm in the short time i had it.

 

[RemainVayne]

Here's the wittei (alleged) and the smaller Occidentalis (alleged) hiding behind it.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

To me, this is no wittei but the one they call Bouche species. Pretty characteristic.

The one behind it is hard to tell the species yet (for me). Looks thin too but it may be the angle / composition.

 

[RemainVayne]

All giraffes are fat and doing well! Does seem like their growth has leveled off some though. Is it typical for that to happen once they reach around the 10" mark?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Good to hear. Fish tend to grow by spurts often, so the slow down shouldn't be too surprising, if it is even real.

Our two Bouche's have been stuck at 18" for a couple of years now. Our two wittei still are growing steady and obviously much bigger than 18". Our Niger g-cat has been stuck at 18" too and the two Volta's have been stuck too, one's at 16"-18" and the other at around 10"-12".