*I wish to keep this thread strictly informational, this thread is not a place for jokes and whatnot. Stories related to the species are more than welcome. If I feel as though some comments are not appropriate I will ask the mods for them to be deleted. Please understand that I’m doing this so that the thread remains easy to follow for scientific purposes.*
Hello everybody, I believe it’s time that I finally started my journal on my dream fish, Wallace’s shoehead catfish. I’m creating this journal so keepers of this amazing species can post their findings in one spot.
I’ve had 3 in my possession for a while now, long enough that I feel comfortable that they are eating well and aren’t at risk of dying due to refusing to eat or other factors. I’ll now tell a story about the first three.
I casually mentioned to Mike at Aqua-imports.com in an email when he told me to let him know if there was anything in particular I was looking for that I was wanting Wallace’s shoehead catfish, not expecting him to take me seriously or be able to locate them. He messaged me out of the blue one day that he saw some on an import list and remembered that I had talked about wanting them and had asked for them to be included in the next shipment from the particular exporter.
Due to covid bringing them in was delayed until 6/28 when 3 came in and on 7/24 the order was finalized and whatnot with the three Wallace’s shoehead catfish having been paid for. Them being busy with a lot of emails to read and whatnot and with covid ended up making it be a month between them coming in and me buying them. A good problem to have. Due to an unorganized email box I can’t give an exact date they arrived but it’s safe to assume around 8/1. This means I’ve had them for 3 months now so I am confident they are eating well and feel confident that they won’t randomly die on me. Here are the three pictures Mike sent me of these three in our emails.
In our email he said and I quote, “As a heads up, the woodcats were a little unusual when it came to packing. They all started producing a large amount of slime when I pulled them, so I kept them in buckets a while and changed their water out several times. After a while they settled down but just a heads up the skin will probably look a little cloudy or milky when you get them. That's exactly how they looked when I received them too so I'm guessing this is just a reaction to shipping stress. Be sure not to drip acclimate - I'd get them into a well-oxygenated tank quickly after you get them.” This I believe may be important regarding the species however it’s just my guess. I have seen a bit of the slime he spoke of.
On 8/11 a single Wallace’s shoehead catfish was brought in and was offered to me however before I go further into detail about the catfish I’ll quote a few messages from our email. I had asked him how to get them to eat as I hadn’t yet been able to get them to eat, I had only been offering dry food, frozen foods, and tilapia/salmon, and this is what I got in response.
“They are very shy eaters. I would place live blackworms and frozen bloodworms into their bare bottom tank and would come in to an empty tank in the morning.”
The above I believe is important and may be useful to others keepers of this beautiful species.
So, I lost contact with mike for a while due to him being very busy, once again a good problem, and I found out on 9/1 the single Wallace’s shoehead catfish had died unfortunately. In the same message he said the following.
“They've proven more delicate than most woodcats to get settled and seem very prone to bacterial issues.”
At that time I had given into the fish and wasn’t willing to risk any longer having them starve to death so I started giving them live ghost shrimp (I’m still doing so). At this point he placed them on the list to bring in for the next shipment.
I got him to contact the supplier and ask what they were eating while with them and got this response, “The supplier confirmed they had been using small earthworms as food and that seemed to work well for them. I’ll do the same here”. I have tried to use earthworms but I believe that the ones I used were too big and the tank was not set up properly to make use of them as a food as I had to dangle the worm in front of the mouth of one of them for almost two hours before giving up and taking it out as I couldn’t leave it in because of all of the driftwood, plants, and leaves I put in. I believe a bare bottom would be best to try worms since the catfish will find them at night when they’re active.
He brought in several which he believed to have been 6, more on that later. Here’s a picture he sent on 9/24 of one.
Due to me not seeing an email he sent on 9/25 the progress with the order halted until 10/11. Anyway on 10/21 I got this message in regards to when we last talked on 10/16 “Unfortunately after we last talked, they started getting milky and lethargic. I'm currently treating them with nitrofurazone and will let you know the outcome.”.
They were better by 10/23 and 5 shipped out on 11/2. With both my previous order and this order I had a bag leak due to their sharp pectoral fins ripping out through the flesh and puncturing the bag. This time Mike triple bagged them and used 3mm bags but it still punctured. I’ll explain more on what I mean by the pectoral fin ripping through the flesh later. Here are pictures from the unboxing.
Hello everybody, I believe it’s time that I finally started my journal on my dream fish, Wallace’s shoehead catfish. I’m creating this journal so keepers of this amazing species can post their findings in one spot.
I’ve had 3 in my possession for a while now, long enough that I feel comfortable that they are eating well and aren’t at risk of dying due to refusing to eat or other factors. I’ll now tell a story about the first three.
I casually mentioned to Mike at Aqua-imports.com in an email when he told me to let him know if there was anything in particular I was looking for that I was wanting Wallace’s shoehead catfish, not expecting him to take me seriously or be able to locate them. He messaged me out of the blue one day that he saw some on an import list and remembered that I had talked about wanting them and had asked for them to be included in the next shipment from the particular exporter.
Due to covid bringing them in was delayed until 6/28 when 3 came in and on 7/24 the order was finalized and whatnot with the three Wallace’s shoehead catfish having been paid for. Them being busy with a lot of emails to read and whatnot and with covid ended up making it be a month between them coming in and me buying them. A good problem to have. Due to an unorganized email box I can’t give an exact date they arrived but it’s safe to assume around 8/1. This means I’ve had them for 3 months now so I am confident they are eating well and feel confident that they won’t randomly die on me. Here are the three pictures Mike sent me of these three in our emails.
In our email he said and I quote, “As a heads up, the woodcats were a little unusual when it came to packing. They all started producing a large amount of slime when I pulled them, so I kept them in buckets a while and changed their water out several times. After a while they settled down but just a heads up the skin will probably look a little cloudy or milky when you get them. That's exactly how they looked when I received them too so I'm guessing this is just a reaction to shipping stress. Be sure not to drip acclimate - I'd get them into a well-oxygenated tank quickly after you get them.” This I believe may be important regarding the species however it’s just my guess. I have seen a bit of the slime he spoke of.
On 8/11 a single Wallace’s shoehead catfish was brought in and was offered to me however before I go further into detail about the catfish I’ll quote a few messages from our email. I had asked him how to get them to eat as I hadn’t yet been able to get them to eat, I had only been offering dry food, frozen foods, and tilapia/salmon, and this is what I got in response.
“They are very shy eaters. I would place live blackworms and frozen bloodworms into their bare bottom tank and would come in to an empty tank in the morning.”
The above I believe is important and may be useful to others keepers of this beautiful species.
So, I lost contact with mike for a while due to him being very busy, once again a good problem, and I found out on 9/1 the single Wallace’s shoehead catfish had died unfortunately. In the same message he said the following.
“They've proven more delicate than most woodcats to get settled and seem very prone to bacterial issues.”
At that time I had given into the fish and wasn’t willing to risk any longer having them starve to death so I started giving them live ghost shrimp (I’m still doing so). At this point he placed them on the list to bring in for the next shipment.
I got him to contact the supplier and ask what they were eating while with them and got this response, “The supplier confirmed they had been using small earthworms as food and that seemed to work well for them. I’ll do the same here”. I have tried to use earthworms but I believe that the ones I used were too big and the tank was not set up properly to make use of them as a food as I had to dangle the worm in front of the mouth of one of them for almost two hours before giving up and taking it out as I couldn’t leave it in because of all of the driftwood, plants, and leaves I put in. I believe a bare bottom would be best to try worms since the catfish will find them at night when they’re active.
He brought in several which he believed to have been 6, more on that later. Here’s a picture he sent on 9/24 of one.
Due to me not seeing an email he sent on 9/25 the progress with the order halted until 10/11. Anyway on 10/21 I got this message in regards to when we last talked on 10/16 “Unfortunately after we last talked, they started getting milky and lethargic. I'm currently treating them with nitrofurazone and will let you know the outcome.”.
They were better by 10/23 and 5 shipped out on 11/2. With both my previous order and this order I had a bag leak due to their sharp pectoral fins ripping out through the flesh and puncturing the bag. This time Mike triple bagged them and used 3mm bags but it still punctured. I’ll explain more on what I mean by the pectoral fin ripping through the flesh later. Here are pictures from the unboxing.
