What’s a good tank size for this fish?

[thebiggerthebetter]

Forgot to add that most of these fish, if not all, are expected to live 20-30 years. I doubt you or anyone can plan to stay in one place with the same income and no modifications (to their basements, garages, and patios, which ALL can be converted to fish rooms!) for 30 years. Surely you'll move. You may need to find your fish other homes or you may have an opportunity to upgrade and grow in the hobby. Who knows.

This places a lot of looseness on the "for life" tank. I don't think there is such a thing. But indeed there is such a thing as treating our pets humanely.

 

[DRteugelsi]

With polys and other smaller tankmates, we can forget about large predatory catfish, such as Cephalosilurus apurensis, which I was going to suggest.

Yea, irwini catfish will take a long time to grow and swims slowly, so 7x3 might be ok for a long time. They tend to hide when small and also people complain they are more like pretty logs although we have seen some more active ones, such as the recent acquisition of justarn

You may consider
-- bolt catfish,
-- vulture catfish (albeit the tank might be a bit too tight for a vulture),
-- smaller Auchenoglanis species (from Volta river, or Bouche sp; or A. senegalis),
-- a couple of Parauchenoglanis species grow to 1.5' and look most impressive (ask Yellowcat )
-- smaller "oxydoras niger", such as a Centrodoras sp., ask koltsixx
-- Hemibagrus nemurus,
-- a school of Pimelodus ornatus (I got 12, they look awesome together and are active),
-- a group of gulper cats
-- a group of Trachycorystes trachycorystes
-- larger plecos (if your tank is glass)
-- it sounds you are not fond of lima SN but a group looks great (I got eighteen 10"-12"-ers in 240 gal).

Is that enough to jump start your marbles?

Wow you went way above and beyond the call of duty on this one HAHA.

Yeah absolutely, im not sure why i havent considered dwarf giraffes or a group of gulpers.
Do you have any pics of your groups of limas?

Thanks i really appreciate it.

 

[justarn]

As Victor said My irwini comes out most evenings for a patrol about. He is interesting, not overly active. My hemibagrus nemurus are very active, always out and about, also my grow out dwarf giraffe cats are cool. They tend to hide alot at the moment in the 35g, they are getting more confident by the week tho, they actually come out with the light on to feed now lol!!! I'm sure they will be right characters in the future.

 

[DRteugelsi]

Yeah ive been considering dwarf giraffes but its hard to find them. I know wetspot has 2 of them for pretty cheap but they probably wont have them by the time im ready to purchase them. id prefer 3-4 though

 

[DRteugelsi]

cant seem to find any Parauchenoglanis... anybody have any ideas where i can get my hands on these ?? the ones at wetspot only grow to be about 8" thebiggerthebetter justarn

 

[justarn]

Yeah there are several species but they are very hard to distinguish so they could well be 16"era tbf. I've been trying to i.d mine, pretty certain mine are the smaller ones but in reality that's probably best for a 300 no?

 

[DRteugelsi]

Yeah there are several species but they are very hard to distinguish so they could well be 16"era tbf. I've been trying to i.d mine, pretty certain mine are the smaller ones but in reality that's probably best for a 300 no?

yeah true id just prefer it to be a little bit larger than a 7" as but maybe ill go ahead and order them and see what happens. id just prefer one or two 12"+ cats aesthetically

 

[justarn]

Are they not 8"SL so 12"TL?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Do you have any pics of your groups of limas?

I don't have the best-looking pics where all of them swim in formation at 45 degrees to the bottom. That looks awesome.

Until then, this may do:

 

[Yellowcat]

About parauchenoglanis, at least two species grow larger, p. punctatus and p. ngamensis that get to around 18"TL. This year I got some p. guttatus and p. monkei from Wetspot, also a couple of notoglanidium mactostoma. All seem to be very slow growing and will probably not get very large (maybe 8-9"TL?) as their growth rate isn't like the larger species I mentioned. There are others in the genus of course but I've never seen any of them for sale except a former p. balayi I had, even p. punctatus and p. ngamensis are extremely rare to find (haven't seen any in years). These fishes seem to just show up as incidental oddballs and are commonly mis-identified anyway. The rare one's I've found over time have come from a direct African fish importer (bought the whole batch, a mix of p .balayi & p . punctatus) and a couple have just shown up at my LFS! I would like to find another source for these fish too, obviously.. As Viktor mentioned there are a few auchenoglanis species that are rumored to stay smaller but also rare in the hobby. I should mention auchenoglanis cf. "bouche" isn't one of them, a pair I sold grow to 24"+ with their second owner. Most parauchenoglanis that show up are usually from the Congo River. After re-reading a revision of the genus it seems that p. guttatus and p. monkei may be the same species? My juvenile's of both look very similar with slight differences, too soon to tell really, time and growth will tell, rarely see 'em anyway as they all hide in the driftwood..