Should I Be Worried about My RTC?
- Thread starter Brody3665
- Start date
Man your RTC must be stressed or something might be wrong with him. Mine is a bottomless pit, He doesn't know when to stop eating. The other day I put 20 large goldfish feeders in there. My 17 inch silver aro ate one, my 17 inch clown knife had 3 and my RTC ate the rest. It looked liked he swallowed a baseball. I didn't think you was going to digest all of that, I thought the next he would just throw up some of it but took it like a trooper. Here's a pic the day after he ate all those feeders
Maybe your RTC has AIDS.........just playing!!!!!!
Maybe your RTC has AIDS.........just playing!!!!!!
There is a 4ft+ RTC at the Public Aquarium near me which is about 15 years old, if not more. I've seen several reports of RTC living over 25 years. Will top notch care of course...
Growth rates change from time to time.
IMO....the practice of 'power feeding' to speed up the process is wrong and eventually leads to the grossly overweight specimins that look like footballs with fins that you see far too often. Lucy (the RTC in my avitar) has this same...On and off growth rate thing going on...she'll seem to stay the same for a while and then gain an inch or so overnight (looks that way in any case...LOL)
Houdini...My MRTC (Marbled redtailed catfish) is another story all together. he came home at about 4 inches and a month later he's just shy of 7 inches.
IMO....the practice of 'power feeding' to speed up the process is wrong and eventually leads to the grossly overweight specimins that look like footballs with fins that you see far too often. Lucy (the RTC in my avitar) has this same...On and off growth rate thing going on...she'll seem to stay the same for a while and then gain an inch or so overnight (looks that way in any case...LOL)
Houdini...My MRTC (Marbled redtailed catfish) is another story all together. he came home at about 4 inches and a month later he's just shy of 7 inches.
Wolf3101;1154484; said:
Think you're right. They also fast on and off according to mine. I have noticed that after catfish get to a certain size sometimes they will fast for up to a month or more. They don't really lose that much weight in that time. Then they just for no reason will start eating like hogs again and will ad some girth along with some extra length. My TSN x RTC does this sometimes. He will not add any size for a few months and then bam, he'll grow an inch a month for a couple months, and then nothing again. Lately he's just been bulking and not getting any longer. He had fasted for about a month and was getting pretty lean before he started eating again about a month ago. Now he's getting thick again. A catfish that size can eat more than you want to know about lol. Try feeding a whole 2.5 lbs bag of shrimp to your catfish every 3 days, and that doesn't even make his belly look bloated at all. Just looks filled out. He also eats a whole large bag of hikari Chichlid pellets every week. All in all I spend about $30 on food per week for just one fish. Ocassionally he will get bannannas which he loves, and tilapia fillets.
LOL Lucy's 18" and so is Kabota...the TSN (Extra points if you understand the referance...) Little Houdini has a ways to go but I always get a kick out of people on MFK complaining about feeding. We have 2 wolves and 7 large dogs who are all raw fed. A normal evenings meal is about 30lbs of meat..fish..poltery or a combination...LOL
About 350 to 400 lbs per month....so I don't sweat the fish food.
...at least not yet.
About 350 to 400 lbs per month....so I don't sweat the fish food.
...at least not yet.
Wolf3101;1154594; said:
lol, sounds interesting. Yeah I know I am gonna have my hands full when all my fish are over 3'. Probably within the next 2 years. Few hundred pounds of catfish to feed lol. Probably be giving 10 lbs of shrimp per day or something crazy. Right now I do about 1 lbs. every other night in the big pond. All the fish combined proabably eat around 10 lbs of shrimp and about 2 lbs of pellets every week. My stupid lima keeps eating all the shrimp I throw in the tank for my MRTC. I moved it to the lima tank as the final growout before the pond, and my biggest lima 14.5" keeps eating all the shrimp. It ate 5 jumbo shrimp and I thought it would die it was so huge. I got some pics, but I am at work I will post them later. I ended up feeding about 5 to the big lima, 2 to the little lima, and finally after they were full, 4 to the MRTC which is 10" right now after almost 4 months. Got it at 4"
Tony if you look at the lateral line of your fish you can see the ungulation of the spine (def genetic).
Brody ,if all else fails try ghost shrimp( live ) but wach out some I've seen lately have a worm( parasite ) in them discard if you get any of them and see if that dosn't get the little bugger going .Also once he is in feed mode you can try other food items .(after it eats a shrimp let's say try to feed it a piece if fish right after ).Good luck!
