Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

our catfish comes up to the surface to grab pellets and to shove jades out of the way so it can grab pellets

My catfishes beat the silvers to the pellets but they fill up quick. Looks funny. I think they make it hard for the silvers to see the pellets.

Was there any anaerobic material on the bottom of the tank? I plan to get some tandanus soon and I predict that the bottom will need to be very clean, as they will come in contact with both bacteria and toxic metabolites from any decomposing organic matter. Maybe, check their bellies for any sign of ulceration. Once they're established, I understand they can keep the bottom stirred so that uneaten food and faeces will go to filter/beds for filtration.

Other than that, I would think about pH shock (already mentioned in this thread), water hardness and hardness shock (especially where rainwater is being used).

Yeah guys, I have been losing catfish lately too. I have only started losing them after the second lot of 50 that I got from John. I lost about 10 within 2 weeks then I recon about ten in the last 3 weeks. I also got 50 cod and some more silvers at the same time. I have only lost 1 cod that I know about and the rest of the casualities have been Golden Perch. I wont be buying GP's anymore they are too hard to feed. I know that a few of the cats have met there fate as per the photo, in fact I have caught silvers with catfish in there mouths and have netted them out and pulled the catfish out of there gobs. I need to build some kind of artificial reef for the small ones to hide in. My water quality is fine and the water temp is around 18-20Deg. I don't have any salt in the FT. I have chick weed in the FT and it dissapears slowly. It might be the 20 goldfish that are eating it.

I wonder if one was just talking and the other guy ran into him.

when they are that small.....it happens...really

Sorry but true

Nah just greedy. As the saying goes: Its eyes are bigger that its belly.

Would the cold nights and warm days cause deaths in the fish camp? We are having that sort of weather at the moment. I have noticed that the temp in my FT will change 1 to 2 deg. over night. I didn't expect this as my tank is 9000Lts and inside my hot house so I thought that it would stay reasonably steady.

I reckon up to 4 deg change would be no problem

How's the growth rate on the catfish?

I am curious about what kind of catfish these are. Are they similar to channel catfish like I have in my system

No, these would be Tandanus Tandanus cats, they are an eel tailed cat fish. I believe that the Channel catfish has a "standard" type of fish tail, i.e. swollow tail.

H.

My catfish are channel catfish, different from the variety that our aussie friends are having the problem with but they all have that sensitive skin.

I've personally decided (at least when it comes to my fish) that when they show symptoms, the best thing is to improve the water quality and aeration. Perhaps salt to 3 ppt (don't go too overboard on the salt since they -channel catfish- don't do well with more than 5 ppt.) And leave them alone as much as possible since they seem to freak out easy and stress seems to trigger illness in them. Only two I've lost to illness happened after extended handling once rather early on after I moved them to the top tank and salted them, next was after harvesting a bunch which seems pretty stressfull for them all.