Electric Catfish - Malapterurus electricus - Advice, Please!

[Madding]

My LFS has a 5 inch Malapterurus electricus (http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/sp ... ies_id=109) in stock that I was interested in keeping in my 150 gallon for a while. I have read that it is recommended you keep adult specimens alone, but this one is still fairly small and its previous owner (an employee at the LFS) claims it was pretty docile.

It would be sharing the bottom of the tank with two Delhezi Bichirs (both around 4-5 inches) and an 8 inch Marbled Pim that I am growing out in the tank. Do you think these tankmates would prove unsuitable? I'm thinking the Bichirs would likely be ignored by the Malapterurus electricus and vice-versa, but am I right to be concerned with the Pim?

Tank is full of driftwood, rocks, anubias plants, and dark soil. Any advice is appreciated!

[sidguppy]

if it's docile now, there's no guarantee it will stay that way once it grows bigger......

Electric cats can and do kill larger tankmates. if you have a docile one, count yourself lucky.

but even then, it can co-exist a long time and turn bad.

[Chrysichthys]

There is also the problem of its eventual size to consider.

Apparently you can teach them to take food from your hand, but I'm not sure how you get from Point A (not tame) to Point B (tame) without being zapped in the process.

[sidguppy]

that's where rubber gloves come in handy ;)

[PeterUK]

There is also the problem of its eventual size to consider.

Everything I've ever read about electric cats states that they get to around 39 inches but cannot find any evidence to support this for fish in captivity.

Question .... Has anyone seen a captive electric cat in the flesh or even in a photo that is any bigger than 10 inches ?

I have been looking into getting one of these for a while and have searched many forums world wide (foreign language forums also with the help of google) and NO-ONE has seen bigger than 10 inches. (unless I've missed one somewhere )

[MatsP]

That probably has a lot to do with the fact that these fish are often bought at small size, and don't get enough space to grow to their full potential. There is absolutely no reason to believe that fish in captivity SHOULD grow to a lesser size than they do in the wild - if they do, it's because of some husbandry reason (wrong food, not clean enough water, low oxygen levels, too cool or warm water, etc, etc). There are actually quite a few examples of captive fish growing LARGER than in the wild - this is normally smaller species that are less difficult to keep.

Large fish bring with them a lot of problems, including the fact that they need very large aquariums with good filtration, and if they are not proper tankbusters, they may well take long to reach their ultimate size - which gives more room for "accidental death", which may be part of the explanation as to why no one sees large fish. Although fishbase actually reports "max recorded age" to 10 years on M. electricus, so perhaps they do not normally grow very slowly - or the data in fishbase is not very good.

The other problem would be that a lot of fish are probably sold under the wrong name - fishbase lists some 20 odd valid species names for the Malapterurus genus.

--
Mats

[Birger]

According to "A revision of the African electric catfishes, Family Malapteruridae (Teleostei, Siluriformes), with erection of a new genus and descriptions of fourteen new species, and an annotated bibliography,Norris (2002)" there are 19 species. The Seeger's book shows the same, 16 being in the genus Malapterurus, 3 in the genus Paradoxoglanis(which are way cool).

Differentiating can be difficult at times and one does not always know what they are looking at when they see one of these generally labeled only as electric cat in a LFS. Yes there are some like the Paradoxoglanis that only reach 15 or 19 cm total length. A person needs to be aware of the potential size reached by many of the species of Malapterus

Also while these are an interesting fish there is limitations to keeping one of these and many times the novelty wears off they seem to get shunted from keeper to keeper.

Birger

[Richard B]

Yes - i've seen a couple of captive specimens around the 2 foot plus mark. (one i think was at Octopus Garden which was/is somewhere by Bedford & the other was in Artis (Amsterdam Zoo) or maybe the Bronx Zoo - it was a while back )

Plus if you can find the footage of a specific episode of the Japanese gameshow "Endurance" there is one where contestants are smeared over their head & torso with a fishfood paste & dunked into some African body of water where they are attacked by dozens of electric cats. Utterly absurd but strangely fascinating & hilarious - plenty of those were much bigger than a foot long.

Viva Clive James

Actually, the most important thing to understand although it may be tricky to do so, is what species the fish in question actually is. Some stay at a much more managable size.

[MatsP]

Funny. Listing all Malapteruriidae in Fishbase lists 25 species, including the three Paradoxoglanis - which means that fishbase has 22 valid species. But I have no idea where the remaining 3 came from, as the latest year of publication on that list is 2002 and the author "Norris". I don't have any literature to check what the difference is... Just "observing a difference".

--
Mats

[Birger]

I will look farther into this, from the list on fishbase Norris leaves out 5 species of Malapterus all described by Roberts and Seegers leaves out 5 species of Malapterus all described by Norris.
The Checklist of Catfish (Ferraris,2007) shows 16 as well but a different list again so some looking into of synonyms there is in order.

[Birger]

Everything makes sense if you go by The Checklist of Catfish (Ferraris,2007) Roberts and Norris had some overlap of species, It is confusing(of course ) and Fishbase seemed to just have entered them all, many entrys are dated 2004, before the Checklist came out.

Sorry Madding if we seemed to get off topic a bit.

Birger

[jimoo]

There is also the problem of its eventual size to consider.

Question .... Has anyone seen a captive electric cat in the flesh or even in a photo that is any bigger than 10 inches ?

The one I cared for at the aquarium was over two feet long, if my memory isn't off, I would say closer to a meter.