Not the focus of the video but is featured and talked about:
We put away 1.5' mullet yesterday - 4 apurensis
- Thread starter thebiggerthebetter
- Start date
Nice apurensis. Mine has hit a growth spurt as of late, roughly 15" or so now. Has yours cause any trouble in your systems? Mine has been a bully as of late.
We've learned to be selective with tank mates when housing apu in smaller tanks like our 240 gal. On top of 100% predatory, they can also be crabby with tank mates, territorially aggressive, more so with the bottom dwellers, much less with mid and top water fish.
In large tanks like our 4500 gal with the jumboes, this apu has been on the receiving end.
In large tanks like our 4500 gal with the jumboes, this apu has been on the receiving end.
Mine is a weird dude. Honestly spends very little time on the bottom, mostly horizontal or vertical on the sides of the tank. Even sometimes upside down. Therefore he leaves my rays and other cats alone, he does grab my mid water swimmers from time to time. I recently moved a large aimara from the system, surprisingly he to would get it from the apurensis.
I'd make sure this wall dwelling is not a forced behavior by some bottom tank mate. They are ambush predators who sit mostly motionless on the bottom or in a thicket of some plants or wood or rocks, so the wall dwelling, which requires constant swimming, would appear pretty unnatural to them.
While Thug and Greta, the TSNxRTC hybrids, acutely react to herring juices in the water, Jello is rather oblivious, further proving that she is sulking in the small tank because she eats 1/10th of what she used to eat in the 4500 gal and in the 4500 gal she was one of the first at feeding times.
Can't-miss thread by jjohnwm on his apurensis stories: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...vour-of-jelly-lophiosilurus-apurensis.749335/
Thanks for the thumbs-up, Viktor.
I wonder if there is a correlation between speed/activity and the degree to which a predatory catfish reacts to a general release of scent into the water?
The streamlined, fast-moving TSN hybrids have those long whiskers that give them a lot of "armspan", so that when they scent a prey item they can quickly follow the scent trail to its source and then engulf it "on the hoof", so to speak. Those lean, muscular bodies look like they would be made for an active predatory response like that; I have even seen smaller prey items react to the spread basket of whiskers as though they are being herded or boxed in, much like marine Pterois lionfish seem to use their gigantic spread pectorals almost like a net to control the prey until the mouth gets within striking distance.
The Jelly, on the other hand, has those relatively whimpy feelers that don't extend much beyond the width of its body. They brush against the substrate as the fish moves forward, seeking food. I repeatedly see mine moving across Massivore pellets on the bottom, and it seems to actually require contact with one of the short bottom whiskers, projecting stiffly forward at a downward angle, to elicit the massive gulp that inhales the food. He doesn't bother seeking out an actively-moving food item; he just slowly cruises into the vertical position that he has learned is very effective when food drops in, and then afterwards carefully hoovers up the missed pellets by slowly sweeping the bottom. No wasted effort trying to race towards prey, which makes sense because he isn't built for speed.
Am I reading too much into this stuff? I'm going mostly from memory of the behaviour of my old TSN, RTC, Leiarus and other big cats from the past, and also from watching your videos. But the hunting strategy seems clearly different compared to the Jelly.
I wonder if there is a correlation between speed/activity and the degree to which a predatory catfish reacts to a general release of scent into the water?
The streamlined, fast-moving TSN hybrids have those long whiskers that give them a lot of "armspan", so that when they scent a prey item they can quickly follow the scent trail to its source and then engulf it "on the hoof", so to speak. Those lean, muscular bodies look like they would be made for an active predatory response like that; I have even seen smaller prey items react to the spread basket of whiskers as though they are being herded or boxed in, much like marine Pterois lionfish seem to use their gigantic spread pectorals almost like a net to control the prey until the mouth gets within striking distance.
The Jelly, on the other hand, has those relatively whimpy feelers that don't extend much beyond the width of its body. They brush against the substrate as the fish moves forward, seeking food. I repeatedly see mine moving across Massivore pellets on the bottom, and it seems to actually require contact with one of the short bottom whiskers, projecting stiffly forward at a downward angle, to elicit the massive gulp that inhales the food. He doesn't bother seeking out an actively-moving food item; he just slowly cruises into the vertical position that he has learned is very effective when food drops in, and then afterwards carefully hoovers up the missed pellets by slowly sweeping the bottom. No wasted effort trying to race towards prey, which makes sense because he isn't built for speed.
Am I reading too much into this stuff? I'm going mostly from memory of the behaviour of my old TSN, RTC, Leiarus and other big cats from the past, and also from watching your videos. But the hunting strategy seems clearly different compared to the Jelly.
