Extreme oddball, ambush catfish question.

[daddyo72]

Could Chaca bankanensis, chaca chaca and Lophiosilurus alexandri all the same size exist in the same tank until the wolf is big enough to be moved to a bigger tank? The wolf is 3 inches, their size. Got any other last advice for me before I place my order? They will go in a 30 Long with gravel as a substrate. I am thinking of switching it to sand to make it easier to clean and for the catfish.

[Don Hiatt]

Chaca have big mouths. This makes them capable of taking fairly large prey. As long as all the fish are close to the same size and you keep them well fed, I don't see a problem with the combo. What do you mean when you say "Wolf"? If you are talking about a species of Hoplias, you may want to think twice about putting anything in there with it. They can and will kill fish that you would think are too large for it to eat. If you are talking about a Wolf Cichlid (P.dovii), you should be ok as long as it's around the same size as the cats.

Chaca are interesting fish. Good luck with them.

[MatsP]

I took the "Wolf" to mean the Lophiosilurus alexandri - but I'm not sure if that's what was actually meant. It's a Chaca "copy" from South America. Btu that's just a guess from my side - I haven't seen this name being used in any way, I just took that from the way it was written...

And this is a double-post, as the same subject is being discussed on Planet Catfish with some reasonable answers...
See this.

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Mats

[daddyo72]

Sorry, the wolf is a rainbow wolf.

[MatsP]

So, I'm still not clear on what the Wolf is (I still BELIEVE that it's the L. alexandri) - I searched for Rainbow Wolf, but none of the hits google got was particularly enlightening on tieing the common name to a scientific name - but maybe it's just me...

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Mats

[daddyo72]

Hoplias malabaricus

[MatsP]

Ok, now that that's clarified (I'm sorry, I should have realized that you were talking about FOUR fishes in the same tank, not just the three you were mentioning in the FIRST sentence...)

Looking at H. malabaricus, I think that's not a suitable companion for the three catfish.

I would also consider Dinyars answer in your post on Planet Catfish, and even more so in regards to the H. malabaricus - i.e. the malabaricus will probably eat MOST of the food before anyone else gets to it... Keeping fish that are very quick to eat together with slow feeders, and that have the same food requirement, is always going to end with some fish living happily and others starving... Or with a dirty tank because you feed them LOTS and end up with a mess...

It does of course work for fish that have differing food choice - for exampl, you can keep active feeders like Cichlids in a tank that also have slow-feeding plecos, because you can give the plecos some vegetable food that they can chew up when they get there, and feed dried food to the cichlids that they eat before the plecos get there...

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Mats