PlanetCatfish.com

i am very new to this, but i thought i'd introduce myself and my cat. i am jessi, an avid fisherwoman. i was out fishing last week and caught a relatively small cat, but thought it was absolutely gorgeous. i brought him home, and intended on eating it. however, when my hubby got home, he wanted to go back out, so we put it in a bucket of tap water. 3 hours later, it was still alive! so i put it in an aquarium which we already had set up. in doing some research, i've found out that it's a 5-8 year old flathead. it's about 12-13in long and really friendly if you can believe it. my nephew named it chucky, don't ask me why. i'm about to tell you something, and i would like to know if anyone else has had a similiear experience. chucky lets me pet him. he seems to actually like it. when i'm done, he'll follow my hand so i have to pet him again before i pull my hand out of the water. can anyone help explain this?

First of all, welcome to planetcatfish
I only know this behaviour from baby mollies, i dont know why they're doing this, interesting!!!

thank you thank you. i am so convinced my chucky was not meant to be a wild fish. he's just to mellow mannered, except when he's hunting. then there are some scary sounds that come out of the tank at night.

Couild you discribe the sounds? scratching? Croaking?

it's just a lot of splashing and him pushing the gravel down. it sounds really violent. last night especially. but when i got up this morning, he had eaten 4 goldfish, so that explains all the noise.

OMG, poor Goldfish.

that's what he likes. and they're not the big pretty ones. they're the smaller feeder fish. the come real cheap and he's growing already.

In the UK it is illegal to sell live fish for feeding to other fish.

I'm pretty sure you can train your fish to take pellets or some such. Not that I care much about goldfish, but because I care about your fish - you can quite easily carry infections/parasites with the feeder fish. Dry pellets are very unlikely to carry any illnesses.

Also, what size tank are you having the fish in - you will need a darn big one eventually - probably better to prepare a large pond outdoors, really.

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Mats

First of all, if it doesn't like pelets, use freezed fish and move him up and down in front of him.

omg u can pet ur catfish?!?! that's awesome!!!! i don't even see some of mine most nights!:P hahaha.....illegal feeder fish in UK? wow never heard of that. but i've also heard UK has much higher animal welfare standards than over here..(oz)

It is not, as far as I understand, illegal to FEED fish with other fish. It's only illegal to sell fish for the purpose of using them as food for other fish.

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Mats

Awhile back I kept a couple of small yellow cats in my tank .they ate almost everything in the tank as they grew,it got to the point that I took atrip to the river each week with my castnet for live fish food this worked for a while ,but in the long run I got some really bad stuff from the river and it was killing all my fish .I finaly drained the tank and eliminated all the fish .now when I introduce a new fish to my tank ,it goes into a small thnk for de icking and cleaning.
mo better