Today I learned the downsides of hand feeding

[JamesF]

They have serious teethe buried in their gums and they can cause some good damage with them.
I had a tooth left in my finger from my 11" lap. The bite hurt enough as it was, but that damn tooth buried under the skin in my finger burned for quite a while before I could dig it out. I'd hate to get bit by an 18-24" bichir.

 

[Snytbaggen]

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.

Yeah, I think he started doing the death roll at the same time I shook him off. There was no real force behind his bite, but I suppose the death roll might be able to do some damage.

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.

Mine was very skittish too, but I held the food out and he inched closer and closer every day, and one day he finally grabbed it. I never starved him, when he got afraid and moved away I just dropped the food and waited for him to pick it up.