[thaicat]

My dream FW is to replicate SE asia/mekong & go massive, whatever size necessary to accommodate a "black shark" and school of "red tails"+ .
Have any of you seen someone on MFK or anywhere do this?

I've never seen anything like that done and doubt it could be successful. I kept a Red Tail from about 2'' long until he was about 4' long in a backyard pond. They're hands down the most personable fish I've ever seen. Mine would come to the bank and eat from my hand anytime I walked to the pond. The thing is, they seem to hate each other and won't co-exist.

Black Sharks are another favorite of mine. Unfortunately, they seem to hate each other as well and the majority have aggression level off the charts. I had a small one (You can see in my pictures.) with my Angels and he never so much as nipped at any of them. I had a few others, including one about 30'' that destroyed a pair of Doviis I had with him. I thought Doviis were about as mean as they get, for freshwater...They were like a couple goldfish compared to that BS. I mean, he stripped all scales, all fins and had started taking chunks and this was all overnight.

I can't imagine the size tank to pull that off correctly! My pond was about 12x 15 and 8' deep. I felt that was too small and tried to rehome him to a larger pond. I just saw an ad on Craigslist last night. A guy had a Red Tail about 14'' , in a 90 gallon tank. He was trying to rehome it and asked that nobody with under a 125 take him. That fish was already to big for a 125 and in another year, under proper care, would be at least 2' long. I wish that type of person would be banned from owning any large fish.


The Black Shark is what got me obsessed with this hobby! I got one as a kid and never forgot it.

ETA: I now realize you probably meant Red Tailed Sharks. I was talking Red Tailed Catfish.

Thai, you two are talking catfishes, yeah? Or literally red tails and black sharks that we always see as 1"-3" fish in the trade?

Being as my experience is primarily in the trade, I mostly saw animals coming through. I did have a few customers (I did aquarium set-up and maintenance for a few years for extra income) with very large tanks with very old fish, but none with the SE Asian animals. So I've never once laid my eyes on a 4' long red tail shark and can't imagine it. They don't have to get very big to get aggressive, I know that much.

Originally Posted by thaicat

I've always thought herb and fish-keeping went hand in hand. I'd much rather watch a tank full of fish than television. Actually, I don't watch TV and would rather watch about anything other than television...But that's another story.

For those that don't know, MonsterFishKeepers.com is to fish/invertebrates what ICMag is to Cannabis. It's filled with exceptionally knowledgeable people and contains about anything you need to know about aquariums.

Damn straight! One of my best former customers was independently wealthy and seriously into animals like arapaima. He was totally built for monsterfishkeepers.com.

Originally Posted by FreedomFightr

anyone keep fresh water puffers? I use to be heavily into fresh water puffers. Some of these puffers are etremly rare. Some have never been bred in captivity. And people risk their lives sneaking into war torn parts of africa to try and catch some of these puffers. They hike into the jungles on feet in search of ponds and rivers, catch these puffers and hike out all on foot!

Fresh water puffers are some of the hardest fish to keep. Water must be perfect for them to survive.

I've never kept them myself, only seen them coming through in the trade. However, there was a gal on the WetWebMedia crew whose passion is puffers of all types, but especially F/W puffers. Her nick she's always gone by is PufferPunk. Great gal, knows a LOT.

Originally Posted by Hammerhead

in my neck of the woods www.reefcentral.com is the king of fish forums.

I've been waiting for this. I started out getting back in touch with Mr. Fenner after an injury. That led me to his forum, WetWebPhotos, IIRC. That led to working also with WWM, but it also led me to reefs.org (where I met my husband), reefcentral and... there's another one, I'm forgetting the name. In any event, is Mr. Calfo still active on ReefCentral? Just curious.

Originally Posted by THCello

I'm a FW guy though, with the exception that I'd love to own Mantis shrimp.
And Marine Bettas are pretty badass too

Not just any mantis, otherwise they'll just destroy the tank. You want a peacock mantis. I'll have to look again, it's been a few years, but for a long time the only pic of a marine betta on WWM was my husband's fish, Spot. WWM is often a Googlewhack (the only hit on Google).

[thaicat]

I was talking Red Tailed Catfish but think I confused the OP with Sharks. This is an example. Mine was like a cat and craved attention/petting whenever I'd go near the pond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29U787KK6ck

I'm a huge fan of Synodontis Catfish. I've had a few large Tiger Shovelheads and Featherfins. Aquariums and fish were a large part of my Divorce. It seems some women can't understand walking into a shop and spending $400-500 each on fish...

And then there are the gals like myself, who had to get a job in the trade to pay for their habit.

I'm not even kidding about that, it's the reason I got into the trade. I managed to hook up with an oldtimer who knew all the shippers out of LAX since the 60s. It's also one of the reasons why I learned to scuba--to collect my own organisms.

Red tail cats need space like sharks, skates and rays need space. Which is to say, to really let 'em get to size. I'm thinking on the scale of what a public aquarium can do. Speaking of which, apparently FRESNO is building a public aquarium.

LMAO! You chose the electric eel episode? Ok, this same shop I first worked at, old guy had several tanks 500gals and larger (including a 1,500gal display that we had to don snorkeling gear to get into to clean). Well, one of his favorite tricks to play on the new kids was to tell them that the only way the electric eel would eat was to hand-feed it. I felt so bad one time, this one kid cried. I mean he REALLY cried, I felt terrible.

If you spend enough time around aquariums, though, you kinda get to liking the occasional jolt here and there. Not 220, though, that shit slams you to the ground.

Back to Synodonts, I feel that same love. Never kept any of the tiger shovelheads, but saw a few come through. I did keep a grab bag of fish that came from Zaire in Africa, because the fellow who collected them had been killed soon afterward. It was a grab bag because none of the fish could be identified. They ended up going to La Fontaine's in San Diego area when I had to move and couldn't take them with me, but there was this one Synodont that was a lot like an 'angel', but... different. Lacy. This was back in the early-to-mid 90s, when I was working at Petschmo HQ's distribution center.

Now, where I live we have an awful Petco and a pisspoor pet shop downcountry, and that's it for aquatic selections. They know NOTHING and mostly kill their fish. I don't trust the shippers well enough to try ordering online, and so between all that and the fact that my husband and I don't agree on how to go about setting up the first tank, I have nothing and haven't for years. I still absolutely LOVE goldfish and koi, though, so I always talk about digging out a pond someday.

[bs0]

Originally Posted by MaynardG_Krebs

I was one of the first people in the u.s. to offer Demasoni. I used to purchase fish thru Laif Demason from Old World Cichlids in Florida. My first clutch was 12 of his first fry.. I got them in and my customer came in at 2 a.m. and looked at them, still in the shipping bag and gladly coughed up 400 buks for 12 fry that were about 3/8ths of an inch long. Beautiful fish.. ah the good ole days..

mgk

That's awesome. I wish I still had mine, they were beautiful to watch. White sand, black marble rock piles, mixed lighting...

It still amazes me the ruthlessness of those fish though. My big male ran the entire tank. When other males started to approach his size he would just slay them. Man, I had such good stock.. dark full unbroken lines, almost irridescent blue hue...

My other tank was a 55g of solely neolamprologus multifacias... That was the most fun tank to watch of them all. Nothing in that tank but piles of shells and white sand. Those bastards were earthmovers, and would terraform the entire tank repeatedly. There was a rivalry between the two different ends of the tank and they would wage the most beautiful 'fights' where they would all swim in this amazing ballet up and down with fins flared (all 1.5" of fish). That was my favorite tank of them all. What awesome fish the multis were.

I had a move that caused me to have to sell the fish. Cut the guy a deal because he was a local and 'had always wanted demasoni and was setting up a multi tank'. ... Found all the fish at a mall fish store about a month later (just walking through the mall, missed seeing fish). The demasoni were all in a tank with no hiding spots with all of their fins torn to shreds, and the multis were in a tank with other larger cichlids, obviously under durress.

I've rarely in my life been as angry as I was at that point. Cussed out the shopkeep (unfortunatly, they were ignorant and didn't know better) and drove to the guys house and yelled at him for like fifteen minutes straight.

I've never kept fish since, and it's been 10 years. I loved those damn fish and that broke my heart.

[demasoni]

.

[DARKSIDER]

Old thread I know... just set up a tropheues dubosis maswa tank with synodontis petricola and golden blue eyed pleco l144