Brachyplatystoma sp. salton

[horopgedrik]

Here's mine :

It's B. vaillantii IMO...

Nice videos. Thanks for the infos. I only have a 135 and that's not big enough to house these beautiful cats. I'm gonna have to pass on it.

Absolutely right, not just about the max size, they can grow really fast also.
But in my experience, I think we can restrain the growth rate, depend on feeding frequency, and food quantity.
Maybe it could give us more time to prepare better home for them (if we force to do it, but still, starving our pet isn't good option at all).
Piraiba very tough fish anyway, very endure in hunger.
It can be said, that we usually not aware that our fish was actually hungry.
I still remember when my fish got beaten and severe stressed, but still could heal itself without food for weeks!
Also I've learned from tyjo1334's piraiba thread, which his fish indeed, very very similar to one of mine.
I found that he raised his fish from 2.5" to 14" size in 2 years period.
In my case, when I really pushed on feeding, I've raised mine 6x faster than tyjo1334's did to his fish.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

How can you tell if it's broken? Will it affect the fish in any way down the road?

From the unnatural curvature in both of their snouts pointing down. It's been broken a while ago, now healed.

AFAIK, it affects the aesthetically-inclined viewer but perhaps it bears deleterious effects on the fish too. I'd think it's pretty hard to tell - need side-by-side experiments. I've seen pics of adults with this traumatic deformity. They look fine otherwise.

 

[fishnatics]

Thanks I didn't even know.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

An example of an adult Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii with a broken snout http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=944

 

[fishnatics]

Yikes that looks like it hurts. Is that from being in a tank too small?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

These guys spook easily and dart wildly and often don't brake for glass walls. The smaller the tank and the less careful the keepers are around it, the worse it is.

It would seem that 90%+ of the older juvies, sub-adults and adults in captivity display the consequences of this injury of varying severity.