Aquarium catfish: description of the species, how long they live and reviews of the owners
Catfish are unpretentious and beautiful fish that even aquarists with little experience can breed without problems.
Catfish are schooling beautiful fish that get along well with many non-aggressive species of the inhabitants of your aquarium!
What kind of fish is catfish?
The habitat of catfish is South America. In their natural environment, these fish live in a stagnant muddy pond, where they can easily get their own food, digging out of the silt:
- larvae;
- worms;
- other living creatures.
In home aquariums, catfish play the role of cleaners, eating leftover food from the bottom after other fish and cleaning the walls of the tank from plaque and microorganisms.
Unlike the fish living next to them, aquarium catfish are completely unpretentious to the conditions of detention: they can eat almost any live food for fish, the acidity and hardness of the aquarium water is not an important criterion for them.
A sharp decrease in water temperature in the aquarium by a couple of degrees will not cause any harm to catfish. Due to the unique structure of the respiratory system, these fish can live in very muddy and dirty aquarium waterwhere there is no air aeration.
Almost all types of catfish live at the bottom of the aquarium, where they carefully explore in looking for food shallow ground. From time to time they rise to the surface of the waterto swallow air bubbles, which are subsequently digested in their intestines. The behavior of catfish is not affected by the purity, quality and aeration of the water in the aquarium.
How long do catfish live?
To the question “How long do catfish live in an aquarium?” no answer. It all depends on many factors such as:
- water temperature;
- type of catfish;
- water quality;
- food quality;
- aeration water;
- salinity of water;
- fish living next door.
If a clean aerated aquarium with thickets of dense plants, with an acidity of up to 8,2 and a water temperature of up to twenty-five degrees Celsius, then catfish in the aquarium can exist for about eight years.
The food that catfish eat also affects their lifespan. Live food is the best food for these ground dwellers in your aquarium. Know that it is forbidden to keep catfish in salted or salt water This will lead to the extinction of the fish.
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Aquarists reviews
Somehow my experienced platidoras crawled out of his hiding place, looked at this miracle and thought, how old was he? They gave it to me along with a hundred-liter aquarium, the owner sold the aquarium and gave me this miracle as a load, with the words “take him, he was left alone and will not live long, he is about six years old already, and he lived in a rotten jar for the last months, which there was no one to deal with.”
The aquarium looked really in a deplorable state, all overgrown … Well, so I took this animal … It was about 2003. After a while, the owner of the aquarium, having learned that the animal was alive, was very surprised … The ending of the story is as follows: it is 2015 on the street, the catfish is still alive and, most surprisingly, in excellent running condition (specially examined from all sides), does this mean he is 18 years old?
In addition to this catfish, I also have a gyrik, I bought it in February-March 2002, it is also cheerful, alive, it drives and builds everyone in the aquarium.
Natalia
An ordinary Ancistrus has been living in my aquarium for seven years already … Dad is wonderful.
Andrei
I have had acanthic in my aquarium since about 2003, there were three of them, I saw two more recently, at the moment there is only one left.
Ruslan
My friend’s pter has been living since 1999, in a healthy 700 liter jar, forty centimeters in size. In general, catfish live much longer than other hydrobionts bought on the market. Why so, it is better to find out from professionals, just as far as I know, the life time of fish in an aquarium is calculated in a couple of years, then they either die or get bored and pass into the hands of the next aquarist.
Maria
Catfish live for at least 10 to 15 years and often die from stupid, even sometimes ridiculous mistakes of the owners, neither the pros nor the student are immune from this.
Alexander
I have an agamix floating around that I bought in 1997. In addition to my oldest catfish, I have another male ancitrus since 2000, 15 to 17 centimeters long.
Novel
Where does this information come from? Even an ordinary anz lives for about 10 years, for many even longer, large L catfish live for more than a dozen years.
Ramon
… I guess my acanthic catfish will even outlive me… even if I now stop drinking, smoking, tuna… and switch to a low-carb diet… my monster is my luggage that I will carry until my death…
Sergio
Exactly a year ago, I managed to exchange a couple of L181 catfish from an employee at work, asking the owner how much they hit? She replied that about seven years!!!
I managed to breed catfish, the fry were born on May 9th.
Valentine
It’s all nonsense, 7 years. In the literature I read about the male savage 046, who is now 15 years old and still takes part in spawning. But the conversation is about a small species of catfish. Just imagine how many years large acanthics and panakis live.
Albert
It’s good that there are 14 years old, otherwise I thought that mine were very old. And it turned out not old, but experienced.
Nikita
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