Since a few weeks back I have been hand feeding my bichir and it's really awesome, but today I noticed one of the downsides of it. The plan for today was to do some maintenance in the tank while I was waiting for his food to thaw, and then feed him. When I was doing the maintenance I suddenly noticed that one of my fingers had become one bichir longer than I remembered. I shook him off, fed him and continued with the maintenance. No damage was done by the bichir, since he's still so small that he can only fit the fingertip in his mouth and didn't even leave a mark, but I'm a bit concerned about potential damage in the future. Does anyone have experience with finger-eating bichirs? It's a senegalus, by the way.
Today I learned the downsides of hand feeding
- Thread starter Snytbaggen
- Start date
I had that happen once by a weeksii. I have 20" bichirs and they are all afraid of my hand.
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Could a big bichir do some real damage? I know their jaws are probably strong enough to give a painful bite, but do they have teeth that could break the skin?
They eat it off my hand pretty gently. Most of the time I just dump the food in or use a tong.don't think so because they don't seem to have quite the bite force. Theoretically, I think a large enough bichir would do a death roll with you finger if it latched on good. I've had my then 3 inch delhezi gently bite my finger when I was hand feed him shrimp.
My Sen. Bichir eats out of my hand. No bites yet, but I'm not really afraid of him. More often than not he inhales his food, rather than biting down on it.
My wolffish, on the other hand, I don't trust. I know he WILL eat out of my hand, I'm just not sure I want him to. He bit the cleaning siphon last night when I was trying to clean his tank. I guess I named him appropriately when I chose to call him Chompers.
My wolffish, on the other hand, I don't trust. I know he WILL eat out of my hand, I'm just not sure I want him to. He bit the cleaning siphon last night when I was trying to clean his tank. I guess I named him appropriately when I chose to call him Chompers.
My sen is too skittish to hand feed, but they do have tiny teeth, theoretically if one wanted to do damage they could inflict a minor wound, it probably wouldn't be all that painful though. At most you'd likely have some superficial cuts but nothing serious.