Black Ghost Knife Fish - Would One Fit In With My Other Fish?

[Jeff Lange]

BGK's are relatively slow growing but will eventually max out close to 18inches,

IMO a tank size of around 250L will suffice for a good two years. However this in No way will be suitable for life and the fish should be upgraded to a tank in the region of 5 x 2 once it reaches 10inches.

Yea, I plan to upgrade my tank size in a year or so. So far the my 65 gallon seems to be more than enough space for my BGK. I plan on at least a 100 gallon, maybe a 120 gallon in the future. I have read many articles that the BGK in captivity does not get more than 12" or so. In the wild they get much larger. If anyone on the forums has a large BGK it would be nice to hear from you and how big yours actually is and how long it took to get the size it is?

 

[tqfan]

i know it's been a while since there was a reply in here, but thought i'd add my info.

i have a 2 and a half year old BGK which is about 9inches long.

it's been living the last couple of months with a lone silvertip tetra, bristlenose plec and 4 albino cats.
we put in some more fish today, including a red tailed black shark, which is tiny, so hopefully there will be no probs with the BGK and shark! have read on here just now that there might be, but we will wait and see.

i say it's about 9 inches, always hard to get an idea, lol!! it does live in a (fake) bamboo tube, and it doesn't fill it, so i could measure the tube to get a better idea. may try that tomorrow.

we usually feed it bloodworm (frozen), peas or garden worms. sucks the garden worms right up in one go!!

it recently survived white spot, it seems to be quite hardy. lost it's clown loach mate, though, but doesn't seem to bothered about being on it's own now. the loach lived in the tube, too.

not really sure if it's grown that much recently. maybe cos it's slow growing we won't notice the same. beautiful fish to watch, though

edit: while i'd always thought that BKG's found it hard to turn in tight spaces, due to what i have read online/been told on here, i was shocked and amazed to see my BKG go into the small coconut cave i have in the tank. it went right in, head first, and came back out head first. it completely disappeared into the cave, before it came back out, not tail poking out, and it's less than 3 inches across!! then it did it again!! like i said, shocked and amazed!!!