I thought that I would do a quick update on my apurensis Jelly Cat thread...and then realized that I have never started one! So...
My Jelly Cat journey started several decades ago, when a guy I met in a LFS had one about a foot long in a bucket and was being told in no uncertain terms by the staff that they didn't want it. I took one look, and I did want it. A deal was struck and the fish became mine; kept it for about 10 years, and finally moved it on to a friend when it was about 24 inches long and too difficult to take with me during a move. He kept it for awhile, and then another guy, and then briefly another guy...I say "briefly" because the fish perished during that last move. It had already outlived two of its previous owners at that point, and was over 28 inches in length and definitely over 30 years of age...still going strong, too, until that ill-fated move ran into problems.
The whole time I owned it, and afterwards, I had no idea what species it actually was. No internet back then, research was difficult and tedious. My wife and I just called it "Lump'o'S**t Catfish". I thought it was great...the name and the fish.
Fast forward to 2020, when I chanced upon a thread here on MFK that finally revealed to me the identity of my long-lost favourite fish: Jelly Catfish, Cephalosilurus apurensis, and at that time being switched into a new genus, so it had become Lophiosilurus apurensis. I always knew that if I found another I would scoop it up, but now I had a name and thus a chance to actually do that.
Finally, in March of 2021 my local enabler, um, I mean LFS, got in a couple of them, and a fat little 5-6-incher came home to live with me. He started off in a 75-gallon tank, soon moved to a 120 and then a 180. He was a very finicky eater, turning up his nose at any but the smallest and freshest worms and crustaceans...NOT!
Lol, he's a Jelly Cat, a vacuum with fins, eats anything, never full, always ready for more. The biggest part of his diet is Massivore pellets, but he also gets Northfins, smelt, rosy reds, earthworms, mayflies, grasshoppers, krill, shrimp...basically whatever is in season and slow enough for 65-year-old me to catch. If a frog in the yard runs afoul of the weed-whacker...he gets it. If my granddaughters catch a small sunfish that is too injured to release with any expectation of survival...he gets it. If the dog throws up in the yard...well, okay, no, he doesn't get that...but if I offered it I know he'd eat it!
I don't feed anything live, other than earthworms. Everything else is humanely dispatched, and then sits in the deep-freeze for a few weeks before going down the hatch. I am hoping that this will kill most parasites and other creepy-crawlies; bacteria, not so much, but whose life is completely risk-free?
Lumpy (a more family-friendly re-work of the name under which his predecessor was christened) is, quite simply, a terrific wet pet. He is menacingly unafraid of people; he spends his time lurking in his dark retreat, his head sticking out towards the front of the tank ('cuz that's where the food comes from, don'tcha know...) and when I seat myself on the stool in front of his tank he is already looming out, hovering vertically against the front glass, mouth at the surface, waiting to suck up whatever I offer with an explosive slurp. Verrrrrry satisfying.
He moves with a ponderous slowness that gives the impression that he is some vast monster; he's not, of course, but if you took a video that had nothing to give it scale, you could easily look at his slow, methodical movements, his tiny eyes set far apart on his head, his overall proportions...and think that he was 4 feet long and weighed 150 pounds. In reality, he is currently a bit over 14 inches and weighs...well, I dunno, but he's not svelte. His skin, which he will allow me to touch sometimes, for a bit, without biting...is so soft and velvety that it feels almost perverse to touch him.
His personality is mercurial; most of the time he is pretty mellow, but if he happens to swim on a particular route through his tank and comes up against an obstacle...even one that has been in the exact same spot for weeks!...he can occasionally throw a hissy-fit and decide that it has to move right now, and he's just the guy to do it. He has occasionally gotten scrapes and scratches around his head as a result of these fits, so I now keep his tank pretty empty; bare bottom, a hefty retreat constructed of 12-inch ceramic tiles siliconed together, a couple of Amazon Swords in pots, some loosely bunched floating Guppy Grass, a covering of Duckweed and a handful of snails.
He hates the Guppy Grass; he commonly sucks in a bit of it with his food, and when he does he will spend several minutes mouthing and gumming the stuff and eventually spitting out just the plant, while never letting go his death-grip on the food itself. He looks like a grouchy old man eating chili, who finds a hair in one spoonful and needs to get rid of it without accidentally losing his dentures.... Same thing with the snails: He will suck up a dozen Massivores and one snail...and then spend 5 minutes working the snail out of his mouth. No way is he spitting those pellets out, even for a second...
Definitely not a fish for everyone. Do you require fish that swim energetically around all day? Do they need to be dressed in all the colours of the spectrum? Must they be friendly and accepting of tankmates? Stay small and manageable for your 20-gallon Hello Kitty plastic all-in-one aquarium? Eat a tiny dusting of fine flakes, and then poop out little ant-turds that disappear immediately into your filter?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above...hard pass. But if you want something a little bit different...the line starts here...
My Jelly Cat journey started several decades ago, when a guy I met in a LFS had one about a foot long in a bucket and was being told in no uncertain terms by the staff that they didn't want it. I took one look, and I did want it. A deal was struck and the fish became mine; kept it for about 10 years, and finally moved it on to a friend when it was about 24 inches long and too difficult to take with me during a move. He kept it for awhile, and then another guy, and then briefly another guy...I say "briefly" because the fish perished during that last move. It had already outlived two of its previous owners at that point, and was over 28 inches in length and definitely over 30 years of age...still going strong, too, until that ill-fated move ran into problems.
The whole time I owned it, and afterwards, I had no idea what species it actually was. No internet back then, research was difficult and tedious. My wife and I just called it "Lump'o'S**t Catfish". I thought it was great...the name and the fish.
Fast forward to 2020, when I chanced upon a thread here on MFK that finally revealed to me the identity of my long-lost favourite fish: Jelly Catfish, Cephalosilurus apurensis, and at that time being switched into a new genus, so it had become Lophiosilurus apurensis. I always knew that if I found another I would scoop it up, but now I had a name and thus a chance to actually do that.
Finally, in March of 2021 my local enabler, um, I mean LFS, got in a couple of them, and a fat little 5-6-incher came home to live with me. He started off in a 75-gallon tank, soon moved to a 120 and then a 180. He was a very finicky eater, turning up his nose at any but the smallest and freshest worms and crustaceans...NOT!
Lol, he's a Jelly Cat, a vacuum with fins, eats anything, never full, always ready for more. The biggest part of his diet is Massivore pellets, but he also gets Northfins, smelt, rosy reds, earthworms, mayflies, grasshoppers, krill, shrimp...basically whatever is in season and slow enough for 65-year-old me to catch. If a frog in the yard runs afoul of the weed-whacker...he gets it. If my granddaughters catch a small sunfish that is too injured to release with any expectation of survival...he gets it. If the dog throws up in the yard...well, okay, no, he doesn't get that...but if I offered it I know he'd eat it!
I don't feed anything live, other than earthworms. Everything else is humanely dispatched, and then sits in the deep-freeze for a few weeks before going down the hatch. I am hoping that this will kill most parasites and other creepy-crawlies; bacteria, not so much, but whose life is completely risk-free?
Lumpy (a more family-friendly re-work of the name under which his predecessor was christened) is, quite simply, a terrific wet pet. He is menacingly unafraid of people; he spends his time lurking in his dark retreat, his head sticking out towards the front of the tank ('cuz that's where the food comes from, don'tcha know...) and when I seat myself on the stool in front of his tank he is already looming out, hovering vertically against the front glass, mouth at the surface, waiting to suck up whatever I offer with an explosive slurp. Verrrrrry satisfying.
He moves with a ponderous slowness that gives the impression that he is some vast monster; he's not, of course, but if you took a video that had nothing to give it scale, you could easily look at his slow, methodical movements, his tiny eyes set far apart on his head, his overall proportions...and think that he was 4 feet long and weighed 150 pounds. In reality, he is currently a bit over 14 inches and weighs...well, I dunno, but he's not svelte. His skin, which he will allow me to touch sometimes, for a bit, without biting...is so soft and velvety that it feels almost perverse to touch him.
His personality is mercurial; most of the time he is pretty mellow, but if he happens to swim on a particular route through his tank and comes up against an obstacle...even one that has been in the exact same spot for weeks!...he can occasionally throw a hissy-fit and decide that it has to move right now, and he's just the guy to do it. He has occasionally gotten scrapes and scratches around his head as a result of these fits, so I now keep his tank pretty empty; bare bottom, a hefty retreat constructed of 12-inch ceramic tiles siliconed together, a couple of Amazon Swords in pots, some loosely bunched floating Guppy Grass, a covering of Duckweed and a handful of snails.
He hates the Guppy Grass; he commonly sucks in a bit of it with his food, and when he does he will spend several minutes mouthing and gumming the stuff and eventually spitting out just the plant, while never letting go his death-grip on the food itself. He looks like a grouchy old man eating chili, who finds a hair in one spoonful and needs to get rid of it without accidentally losing his dentures...
. Same thing with the snails: He will suck up a dozen Massivores and one snail...and then spend 5 minutes working the snail out of his mouth. No way is he spitting those pellets out, even for a second...Definitely not a fish for everyone. Do you require fish that swim energetically around all day? Do they need to be dressed in all the colours of the spectrum? Must they be friendly and accepting of tankmates? Stay small and manageable for your 20-gallon Hello Kitty plastic all-in-one aquarium? Eat a tiny dusting of fine flakes, and then poop out little ant-turds that disappear immediately into your filter?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above...hard pass. But if you want something a little bit different...the line starts here...
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