ELLO! My brother and I have had an oxydoras niger catfish living in a 180gal with a larger red tailed cat, a shovel nose, 2 longfinned oscars, and 2 flowerhorns. Everything I've read has said that these oxydoras niger cat fish are big and active eaters and grow fast. We have has this guy for a year and he doesn't move around too much and when he does its usually in the middle of the night. So my question is, is there a reason that this chap is much less active than what I read about? Do we just have a lazy fish?
Question about oxydoras niger
- Thread starter Sirspifalot
- Start date
I dont know about others but being that catfish are more so scavengers and are active at night I feed mine at night so they get all the food and therefore get the needed food to grow properly, my catfish (even though not the same kind) are pretty sluggish during the day but are active and eat at night.
Yeah what Egon said. I had a niger and a giraffe cat that both grew to about 30". They just used to sit side by side all day, unless I fed them. Big cats soon realise there's no point looking for food when there isnt any, so they just sit and wait.
The other cats eat a lot during the day when there is food in the tank. And they eat just about everything too. Garbage cans just about. Cept the redtail doesn't care much for Basa fillets. The niger's mouth though seems to small for the chunks of food that are thrown in there for the other cats and if I put massivoure or other sinking pelets the redtail vaccums them up pretty quickly. But I suppose that the niger eats something cuz hes been in there a year and is still very much alive. Just not growing.
How big is the niger cat? My guys were very shy while they were smaller, but as they have gotten bigger, they have gotten extremely friendly. They are now 1 year 9 months, and are 20-23". They are vacuum cleaners and love their pellets. I think you might need make sure he get his pellets.
The niger cat is about 13 inches I would say. I know he likes the massivoure pellets I have seen him eat them but the vacuum cat usually gets to them first. I've seen that jerk eat near 15 bucks worth of massivoure in 2 minuets so we usually give the bigger ones market fish and such. Should we try dumping the pellets in after power feeding the redtail and and shovelnose? Or perhaps take the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" route since he doesn't appear to be starving? Also the tank temp is at 79 degrees.
Sirspifalot;3819873; said:
I have been feeding filets of tilapia to the rtcxtsn and tsn before I dump in pellets, and they don't feed quite so frantically giving the others a chance to eat. The tsn will always eat until everything is gone, but at least she eats more slowly. I also try to dump handlefuls all over the tank to keep them from inhaling the entire cup