I envy german fishkeepers. many sites I've seen monster filas, wels, and jau. Be cool if you could sneak in some pics from some german forums. I can't read german so I'm not sure where to look, but have accidentally ran into some every now and then.
I can´t remember which in which forums I read, because I was not registered there. Last week I was at Berlin, and they have a lot of true monster fish at the aquarium, including two Arapaimas of more than 2m, several giant Pangasius santiwongsei up to about 1,5m and a lot of other giants. They had also an aquarium with two wels, both about 1,-3-1,5m, and one of them was white-yellow. But sadly none of the wels-photos I made from them really turned out to be good. I am still under the impression that a wels is not really a fish for an aquarium, even a big one becomes just too small. Theoretically I could house one in my 10.000 litre outdoor pond aquarium which will be soon finished, but even this could become too small.
But there are a lot of very cool videos of wels in nature and in aquariums at youtube, like this ones:
These guys look much more gracefull and streamlined in the water than out. Most of the time you see them on the banks where they look fat and lazy. Love the massive lower jaw on them! I could keep one in my tank also, but would need to eventually upgrade. 4000 gals doesn't seem fair lol. I know I'll eventually need to upgrade for my filamentosum also, although at the growth he's exhibiting now it will be many years from now.
Yes, they look really highly impressive in the water when they move. Those I saw in zoos were in general very lazy, but they seem to become quite active when they are hungry.
I think the baitfish are rudds or roaches, they are common in most waters here and cheap fish to feed carnivorous fish. But as the wels is very easy to train to eat dead food too, I would use mainly pellets and similar stuff to feed them. I don´t really like it use living vertebrates as food items.