Wels catfish, albino, ~10"

[wednesday13]

Gutted for ya my friend :/.... atleast u have a backup tho. id let him bust outta that 240 before u move em. looks like direct predation to me... the woes of community tanks, they choose who lives and dies.

could b the temp/food tho i agree... i just lost an albino CK kinda the same way. heavy pellet feeding night before, temp dropped over night and he couldnt pass his load. just flopped over dead.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thank you, all.

I don't think it was one bite if I can add. Look at the skin, each piece has different rounded indentations. Only thing I can think of is the vatf. They have narrow mouths that look like the rounded parts imo. Maybe the vultures went on a feeding frenzy. Don't think we can be sure. But make sure the next one is as big as can be before introducing. May need to put it in the other 4500g eventually too as you know.

I have no reason to believe it was killed and every reason to believe the missing parts were taken out after death, more than likely by the vultures... hence the name... they are the specialists. Of course, can't prove it. It's simply that no tank mate had ever messed with the wels to any degree whatsoever.

I'm thinking the temperature could be playing a role, and he stuffed himself too much at too high a temp? Just a thought

High temp would aid digestion. As Wednesday below says in his example a temp drop would make more sense. But in any case, my temp is very steady and changes very slowly - 24,000 gal system with the sump half in ground and the whole thing protected from the elements. Neither there was a significant weather change.

But yes, I can't refute the stuffing. He definitely ate a lot the night before. So that could be a factor... I just struggle to rationalize how and why because he had done so much eating before and its surviving brother does that too every now and then.

Gutted for ya my friend :/.... atleast u have a backup tho. id let him bust outta that 240 before u move em. looks like direct predation to me... the woes of community tanks, they choose who lives and dies.

could b the temp/food tho i agree... i just lost an albino CK kinda the same way. heavy pellet feeding night before, temp dropped over night and he couldnt pass his load. just flopped over dead.

Thanks, Russ. As stated above, my current state of thinking based on observations leads me to propose a freak, unforeseeable occurrence of sort (90% chance), which involves him killed neither by a tank mate (still there is, say, a 5% chance) nor by overeating (5% chance).

I don't quite get the mechanism of how the CK died. It takes time for clogged food to spoil in the intestine (if in the tummy it'd be upchucked), produce enough deadly toxins, and poison a fish to death. Most usually, it appears fish would die not from these toxins directly but from secondary factors like an ensuing bacterial infection, septicemia, etc.

What I am saying is that I want to learn how this happens. I am not disputing the fact.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

June 14, 2017 update. Just a bit under 2' now. And also alone now. Started biting African lung fish, yellowcheeks, and capapretum tank mates, so one by one they have been removed.

Still largely ignores fish and likes his pellets, although I have to take the pellets out too sometimes. Moody fish overall.

 

[moe214]

Beautiful. What are your plans? I know you wanna go with the lowest risk; that's the smart thing to do.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

There is no much of a plan. I am winging it.

 

[moe214]

So which 4500 will it enter and at what size? Since it's slim I'm sure you can get away with that tank for a while longer but I know you don't wanna either

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I really don't know. Having lost one to an unknown reason in one of the 4500 gal, I'm riding out Wednesday's advice of letting the last wels "bust out" of 240 gal.

It's always been pretty sedentary for me, differing in that from Wednesday's. Never catch him swim, seldom changes spots. When I see an undesirable difference in its behavior, I'll start thinking about it. Who knows, I might set up more larger tanks by then. Or not. No sense in guessing at the moment.

 

[Circa4190]

I was lucky to get two wels catfish from Wes this summer 2016 at ~4"-5". Ju-u-ust before they got banned this Fall.

I wanted natural colored but albino was all that was available. Easy cats to feed. The two have been together for the first month+, alone, then the bigger one (pictured below in the video) that was ~5" started tattering fins of the smaller one at ~4", just as Wes had warned me that they don't get along... but I needed to see for myself.

The smaller one went into a different 240 gal and grew to 8" quickly - there was a lot of well-feeding fish in there. The bigger one stayed in the original 240 gal with a few not-so-well-feeding tank mates and, consequently, didn't grow as vigorously and has been notably shyer than the smaller one in the other tank.

The originally-smaller one then graduated into another 240 gal, also stocked with a vigorously feeding gang. It tried bossing others around in there, including 5 closely related Amur catfish. In 1-2 weeks, the wels got its tail damaged (not sure by who, I'm guessing the Amurs) and went back into the prior 240 gal that was safe. The tail pretty much fell off, then grew back but in a V-shape

Anyhow, the originally-smaller wels is now around 1' and is in a 4500 gal, its 4th tank, doing well so far. Has been there about 3 weeks now. The originally-bigger-now-smaller-but-intact one is ~10" and is still in the same first 240 gal they both had been in. Its mates are a 2'+ Indian swamp eel and a 2' West African lungfish.

Both my wels profoundly prefer pellets to fish!

This is the 10" one now. If God is willing, will shoot the 1', V-tailed one later.

That's a ballsy thing to keep. Wels get HUGE. I watched a tv series on netflix where some crazy bastage wanted to noodle one. They did, just over 7ft long.

....Crazy.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thanks, mate. Wow, wels noodling? Never heard of it. Gotta comb YouTube now. Do they guard their eggs like flatheads and blues do??

A 7' wels by noodling? The dude should have been 300 lb power lifter, otherwise the wels would have taken him under or break his wrists by doing a death roll, I imagine... At 7', that's possibly over 100 lbs of raw wels power.

 

[fatboy8]

This is awesome to see. One of my dream fish to keep but I don't think I'll ever have the means to house one.