Picked This Up At The Weekend

[CFC]

How are the pacman cats?

I only got one, at over £150 a pop the mrs gives me stern looks when i start talking about multiples of fish, but the shop has got a few more in so i might be lucky enough to grab at least one more soon since I've just had a nice juicy pay increase.

I was just wondering a couple of things..

Is a fish like that dangerous?
Do you have to be careful when putting hands in the tank (or dont you put hand in?)
How much does a fish like that cost?


I think its a very nice fish, but i dont think i would ever be able to cope with a tank the size needed for such fish (space wise).


ps, i use them sponge filter for all my tanks, they are great dont ya think? (cheaper as well to just run off air pumps)

I wouldn't say fish like this are dangerous, sure they've got some pretty big teeth but all a bite will do is draw a little blood, they're not going to sever any appendages or drag you in and drown you, things like stingrays and toadfish are far more dangerous as a sting from one could land you in a lot of trouble.
To avoid being bitten you just have to be a bit sensible, if you go wiggling your fingers in the water like a little bunch of worms then you can expect the fish to come up and see what they are, and using tongs for hand feeding is usually a pretty good idea with anything which has teeth and is over a foot long.

Price wise it varies from shop to shop, i thought this one was pretty cheap for its size at £50, I'd usually expect a fish like that to be between £80 and £100, but you can pick up 5" juveniles for as little as £15 in some places.

The sponge filters are pretty impressive, i was dubious when i first started using them and had a few sleepless nights when i started removing the power filters from each tank one by one, but they keep the water perfectly stable and clean providing the stocking levels are kept low and since most of my tanks are single specimen tanks or contain a maximum of 4 fish they suit my needs very well and save me a fortune in electric since i'd be running another 14 power filters otherwise.

 

[mark7616]

Ha ha I wouldnt even say splashing your fingers will encourage them to bite. Mine was so bloody dopey anymore layed back and it would of been lying down. In my struggle to get it eating dead I used to poke it with the whitebait and the thing just stayed there taking the abuse from the litte white bait not even and angry snap. I did once get it to hold the whitebait but then one of the bass swam passed it so it crapped its self and dropped it. There great fish I miss mine need to find another, and seeing as you nicked my one CFC lol I need to hunt down another see if I had left you and gone straight to MA I would have that one but the missus waned to go shopping so I was under orders to go straight home.

 

[invader]

How are the pacman cats?

I only got one, at over £150 a pop the mrs gives me stern looks when i start talking about multiples of fish, but the shop has got a few more in so i might be lucky enough to grab at least one more soon since I've just had a nice juicy pay increase.

Oh, I thought you had more than one, but I must have remembered wrong. It would be awesome to get more, they're such weird/cool fish.

Which tank is it in?

 

[CFC]

Its in a 30g along with the new gulper which is too small to go in with my other gulper at the moment, once it outgrows that tank i'll move it to a 180 until its large enough to go in the big tank.

This gar has quite an attitude, its taken bites at my nile perch, royal knife and calophysus already and is a glutton at feeding time taking anything i throw at it.

 

[5teady_2012]

How are the pacman cats?

I only got one, at over £150 a pop the mrs gives me stern looks when i start talking about multiples of fish, but the shop has got a few more in so i might be lucky enough to grab at least one more soon since I've just had a nice juicy pay increase.

I was just wondering a couple of things..

Is a fish like that dangerous?
Do you have to be careful when putting hands in the tank (or dont you put hand in?)
How much does a fish like that cost?


I think its a very nice fish, but i dont think i would ever be able to cope with a tank the size needed for such fish (space wise).


ps, i use them sponge filter for all my tanks, they are great dont ya think? (cheaper as well to just run off air pumps)

I wouldn't say fish like this are dangerous, sure they've got some pretty big teeth but all a bite will do is draw a little blood, they're not going to sever any appendages or drag you in and drown you, things like stingrays and toadfish are far more dangerous as a sting from one could land you in a lot of trouble.
To avoid being bitten you just have to be a bit sensible, if you go wiggling your fingers in the water like a little bunch of worms then you can expect the fish to come up and see what they are, and using tongs for hand feeding is usually a pretty good idea with anything which has teeth and is over a foot long.

Price wise it varies from shop to shop, i thought this one was pretty cheap for its size at £50, I'd usually expect a fish like that to be between £80 and £100, but you can pick up 5" juveniles for as little as £15 in some places.

The sponge filters are pretty impressive, i was dubious when i first started using them and had a few sleepless nights when i started removing the power filters from each tank one by one, but they keep the water perfectly stable and clean providing the stocking levels are kept low and since most of my tanks are single specimen tanks or contain a maximum of 4 fish they suit my needs very well and save me a fortune in electric since i'd be running another 14 power filters otherwise.

Thanks for the info, i always wondered about how dangerous they was, at least now in the future if i ever have the space to get some, i know that i aint going to be eaten alive lol.


Yeah the sponge filters are impressive, when i first converted all my tanks to sponge filters i was a bit worried if they could cope, then a freind explained to me that the sponge basically is like 4 times the amount of media that what most filters conatin (for my size tank) and he said in all fairness that means your 4 times over filtered lol.

 

[simonas]

How are the pacman cats?

I only got one, at over £150 a pop the mrs gives me stern looks when i start talking about multiples of fish, but the shop has got a few more in so i might be lucky enough to grab at least one more soon since I've just had a nice juicy pay increase.

I was just wondering a couple of things..

Is a fish like that dangerous?
Do you have to be careful when putting hands in the tank (or dont you put hand in?)
How much does a fish like that cost?


I think its a very nice fish, but i dont think i would ever be able to cope with a tank the size needed for such fish (space wise).


ps, i use them sponge filter for all my tanks, they are great dont ya think? (cheaper as well to just run off air pumps)

I wouldn't say fish like this are dangerous, sure they've got some pretty big teeth but all a bite will do is draw a little blood, they're not going to sever any appendages or drag you in and drown you, things like stingrays and toadfish are far more dangerous as a sting from one could land you in a lot of trouble.

sorry for the thread hijack CFC, are Toadfish stings really that dangerous? I've got a couple and I'll be more careful now!lol

lovely Gar by the way. after seeing my first ever Gar the other week I'd love to be able to house one

 

[CFC]

I've heard conflicting information about the toadfish stings, some sources say its no worse than a bee sting while others say that its along the same lines as being done by a stingray with excruciating pain and a need for immediate hospital treatment, either way I'm not about to go handling my toadfishes just to find out Really any sting from an aquatic animal should be taken fairly seriously, I once got stabbed in the hand by the pectoral fin of a shovelnose while helping a friend move his fish and within a few minutes my hand had swollen to twice the size and i had a very painful sensation all the way up my arm which lasted for several hours. That's not to mention the sceptecemia which nearly killed me after stabbing myself on the dorsal spikes of a red snapper, though that was a dead fish for dinner

 

[andywg]

From my reading Toadfish stings are not the worst that can happen. I recall the venomous ones are on a par with lionfish stings which are usually described as bee stings on steroids. Best treatment is to place your hand in hot (but not scolding) water as the heat denatures the toxin. I believe part of the problem with toadfish stings is many people confuse toadfish with stonefish (which can kill very quickly due to the strength of the toxin).

The venomous toadfish are in the Subfamily Thalassophryninae (exclusively FW in South America). Most toadfish in the hobby are brackish and belong to Subfamily Batrachoidinae so the chances of a bad hit are slim.

However, there are a large number of bacteria abound in our tanks and getting jabbed by almost any fish can have undesireable consequences as noted by CFC.

 

[guppy_man]

I've heard conflicting information about the toadfish stings, some sources say its no worse than a bee sting while others say that its along the same lines as being done by a stingray with excruciating pain and a need for immediate hospital treatment, either way I'm not about to go handling my toadfishes just to find out Really any sting from an aquatic animal should be taken fairly seriously, I once got stabbed in the hand by the pectoral fin of a shovelnose while helping a friend move his fish and within a few minutes my hand had swollen to twice the size and i had a very painful sensation all the way up my arm which lasted for several hours. That's not to mention the sceptecemia which nearly killed me after stabbing myself on the dorsal spikes of a red snapper, though that was a dead fish for dinner

Really nice looking gar CFC.

I've also been stabbed by a dorsal fin of a european perch (while fishing), i nearlly went to hospital, i couldn't feel my hand, and it was twice the size as the other. But the swelling went down over night. I have also been bitten by a pike (while fishing) well, i wouldn't call it a bite, my hands were in the wrong place at the wrong time, 10lb pike did abit of damage to my hand, so now i wear a glove

i presume you feed frozen food to your fish, just wondering how much you would pay for say a pack? I usually go pike fishing alot and buy frozen joey mackeral, sand eels, smelts and white bait all. depending on the sizes i pay £1.50 for a pack of 6, at my local tackle shop.

 

[simonas]

I've heard conflicting information about the toadfish stings, some sources say its no worse than a bee sting while others say that its along the same lines as being done by a stingray with excruciating pain and a need for immediate hospital treatment, either way I'm not about to go handling my toadfishes just to find out Really any sting from an aquatic animal should be taken fairly seriously, I once got stabbed in the hand by the pectoral fin of a shovelnose while helping a friend move his fish and within a few minutes my hand had swollen to twice the size and i had a very painful sensation all the way up my arm which lasted for several hours. That's not to mention the sceptecemia which nearly killed me after stabbing myself on the dorsal spikes of a red snapper, though that was a dead fish for dinner

cheers CFC

I'll keep a good eye on mine as usual lol

 

[cane76]

im pretty sure that is a alligator gar

 

[CFC]

It only has a single row of teeth, that was one of the first things i checked.

http/images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...6GB236&sa=N

 

[Attilauk]

what a fantastic looking fish!

it looks almost prehistoric

 

[CFC]

Thats because they are, true garfish along with the African bichir species have been around since the dinosaurs walked the earth.

 

[Attilauk]

Thats because they are, true garfish along with the African bichir species have been around since the dinosaurs walked the earth.

well you learn something new every day, thank you for that