Hi my friend and I had a redtail x shovelnose hybrid and at two feet it could easily eat a 10 inch goldfish or a full grown oscar(discovered this by accident). But we trained it to accept other food some hand fed. We fed it thawed frozen smelts, prawns, small gold fish and dither fish(live), and a variety of other stuff. The biggest problem with feeding live when a large catfish gets to be 1 foot, especially redtails and shovelnose is they are aggressive hunters. And as we found out the hard way,they can pop the end of your aquarium off in there chase enthusiasm. Hence he is in a pond now.