PlanetCatfish.com

I have alway liked Wykii's and in the process of setting up my garage I will have a spare tank. 5'L x 24"W x 30"H. Realistically is this suitable for a Wykii.

Thanks

I'd say no, based on the fact that, fully grown, this fish well exceeds the 4 x length and 2 x width 'rule'.
HTH
Martin

Somehting in the order of 10' x 5' x 3' would be more adequate, I guess.

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Mats

I'd have thought as long as you are preppared to do your water changes etc, etc, you'll probarbly be OK !

I thik such a fish is still entitled to some exercise, isn't it?

Besides, proper waterchanges would, I think mean keep it under a running tap

I am big on weekly waterchanges I usually do 20% weekly on everything.

I have done lot of reading and have not really found any real info on the eventual captive size of these cats. Has anybody got any idears. I would estimate 20" would be a good size particulaly with a specimin kept from a small size.

The captive size, assuming good conditins (sufficiently good filtration and water changes, correct feeding, sufficient swimming space to keep the fish active, etc), there is no real reason to believe that the fish in captivity would be any smaller than the natural size in the wild. There is of course a natural variation (just like all creatures), but if the Cat-eLog lists it as 700mm (28"), then I would expect it to reach that sort of size in captivity - it may of course take a while to reach that size both in nature and in captivity.

Ok, so many large fishes are kept in inadequate conditions and do not reach their ultimate size - because it's very hard to keep large fishes in captivity - the size of tank you need for a fish that grows much over 30cm/12" is very hard to manage, and once the length starts getting into the 50cm+/20"+ size, you are definitely looking at specialist systems for both filtration and tank itself. A cubic foot of water weighs about 25kg/50 lbs, and you need 150 cubic foot according to my post earlier to keep a 750mm/30" fish - that's 3750kg/7500 lbs give or take, just for the water - the glass will probably add another 1000 lbs. Most houses are not built to take the load of a fully-loaded van in the space that is about the half or two thirds of a mid-size van.

This leads to one of two things: Either the fish doesn't grow as it should (it becomes stunted), or it dies from lack of filtration/water changes or other consequences of not having a large enough volume of water.

As to 20% weekly water changes, that is much less than what I do - I generally replace about 50% of the water in most of my tanks each week. And yes, I do that as one water-change - it would be better for the fish to do half as much twice a week, but I haven't got enough time to do that.

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Mats

I'd agree, 20% a week isn't a lot, that's my minimum weekly on low stocked holding tank. I do around a third weekly, but my koi "overwinter" tank gets 50%.

I'd go for for 8'x30" as a minimum, with hefty external filtration, height of the tank isn't so important but I'd say 15" minimum. If you are sticking to that size of tank (for one fish) consider something more sedentary and smaller than 24" TL.

Jools

Thanks for all the help given. I will skip the Wykii until I free up something bigger.

While looking into this I have read a mixture of views as to whether this cat is 'Active'. and lots of varing views of the tank size, as small as 4x2 has been sugested. The artical in the 'Catfish of the month' states that size. It does recomend bigger but still implies it's possible.

When I wrote, that, I'd not seen one bigger than 50cm, I still haven't seen one bigger in captivity, but I have seen photos of wild caughts that are clearly larger. I will amend the CotM article, thanks for pointing that out.

Jools

Lynwood fish house in tolworth surrey (don't think they still exist? Do they?) had a monster there many years ago (when i was a teen) probably 75-85cm TL. Quite a beligerent temperment too

They do still exist: http://www.lynwoodaquatics.com/ with a copyright 2008 at the bottom, so I guess they are still active.

I went there quite a while back. It was a mixed experience, with some nice fish in some of the tanks and some other tanks that looked like they could do with a good cleanout or medical rescue...

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Mats