predatory catfish under 12"?

[thebiggerthebetter]

You can browse the Planet Catfish Cat-eLog and will find great many candidates - just pay attention to max size and dietary habits.

I am not familiar too much with smaller catfish but, yes, if you want a catfish that ONLY eats other fish and never partakes of anything else, there wouldn't be many. Cetopsis aka blue whale catfish come to mind.

Usually catfish are from a little bit to a very significant extent opportunistic in their dietary habits and eat what's available - live or dead, fish or insects or crustaceans or mollusks, amphibians or reptiles, or mammals, or flora, like fruit, seed, nut, plant matter, etc.

thanks for the recommendation. Aguarunichthys torosus looks awesome and definitely checks a lot of boxes in terms of size and appearance. anyone have experience obtaining and keeping this fish?

You can find by search threads of Dave and ours about keeping bolt catfish. But it will not satisfy 12" or less requirement.

 

[Fishman Dave]

The lightening Bolt

Almost forty years as a fishkeeper who has loved and kept many catfish and for thirty five of them one fish that I had wanted to own had eluded me. The bolt cat, aguarunichthys torosus. Then on one of my quarterly visits to Neil at Pier aquatics in Wigan I came across a tank of 10 small (3" )...

www.monsterfishkeepers.com