Electric Cats

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just sharing pictures of electric catfish.

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i feed this catfish live fish, bloodworms and fresh small shrimp.

[Lisachromis]

Bet you don't stick your hands in there too often.

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i tried it once, what a shocking feeling mwehehehe

[Mike Wise]

Bet you don't stick your hands in there too often.

I've kept electric cats for a about the last 25 years. They are my preferred culling fish. I've had my present one for 8 years now. It's now easily a foot (30 cm) long. I put my hands in its tank whenever I need to clean algae off of the glass. It doesn't seem to care and I've never been shocked by this fish. I don't try to grab it, however. Other than culled fish, it lives (most of the time) happily on pellets.

I've only been shocked by an electric cat once. I had an 8"/20 cm specimen that was more of a pet. I could hand feed him. The kids on the block always wanted to feed it. It would stick its head out of the water up to its eyes and open its mouth wide for food. The kids would drop pellets/tubifex cubes in and watch them disappear. I stopped letting the kids do this when once I threw some tubifex cubes in its tank while feeding the other fish. When I came back to its tank, it was playing water polo with a particularly large cube that it couldn't get its mouth around. I decided to help. I pushed it down its open mouth. At the same time the cat grabbed the cube and part of my finger! He was shocked (surprised) to find my finger in his mouth. I was shocked when he was shocked! It felt like a shock from a 120V electric outlet.

[Dave Schumacher]

I had a similar experience at the first fish store I worked at. I was doing water changes, and no one had mentioned that the lone cat in one of the tanks was an electric cat. I had never heard of such a thing at the time. The cat didn't care that I was in the tank, until I nudged him with the siphon to get the gravel below him. That didn't go over so well!

[DENCIO]

thanks for sharing your shocking experiences. eventhough they are ugly, this catfish is very interesting and fascinating. i was surprised to find out that they are very much present in Lake Tanganyika. They probably devouring our beloved cichlid

[Marko Lenac]

you made me want some electric beasts

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bigger pics

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last....

[BrokenBoxJ]

If you search youtube.com with keywords:
Electric eel christmas tree

There is a story of a public aquarium in japan using watt collectors in an eel tank to collect enough power to light up a christmas tree.

Wonder if you could setup same for electric catfish? Would be a great story for local media and raising interest in the hobby.

[Mike Wise]

Electric eels put out more volts (and watts!) than an electric catfish. I saw the head of an electric eel come out of the water for air while collecting in Peru. The head alone was 5"/13cm long (nose to gills)! I imagine that the whole fish was over a yard/meter long. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't catch him in the net!

[dtoth]

I would love to have one of these as a pet.

[SergeS]

These catfish are ugly indeed, but yet interesting enough to make them pretty

They used to (maybe still have) an electric eel in the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium (Belgium). Connected to the tank it was in, there was a light bulb, so you could actually see when the fish was releasing a shock. Of course, everybody started banging on the tank window to make the light go on, but yet it was a good idea