Gut loaded crickets for my red tailed chalceus

[mxgibby911]

I've been having issues with my red tailed chalceus eating very little food. I've recently found a flake food that he eats and purchased some tiny "gut loaded". crickets for him. Just curiuos if the gut loaded is a bad thing for my fish, pretty sure it is not, but better safe than sorry. He took to them immediatly and 6 were gone in a matter of a minute. the red tail is about 5" long there is also a 7" long clown knife in the tank that took a fancy to them

[Red]

What size is this tank? And it is fine he is eating the crickets, i would just try to train him to flakes or pellets..

[mxgibby911]

the tank is a 55g. We have had him for about 2 months and he looked to be losing weight. So i wanted to try something else and the crickets came to mind. I feed the tank a reasanable veriety of foods from frozen blood worms, tubefex worms, flake, sinking pellets, and freeze dried shrimp (all in proper moderation of course) and the crickets were the first thing he really went after

[Red]

I would get rid of the knife and the Hifin. The knife gets huge, and the hifin loach likes cold streaming water.. And try to fatten the fish up and then change it over to prepared foods..

[mxgibby911]

I'm not worried about my fish getting too big for the tank, when the knife gets to large for the tank our lfs has an excellent buy back program. They have multiple tanks that carry the larger fish such as the clown knife, red tailed catfish, large plecos and such. they also keep alot of fish for display. The goal with the chalceus is to make sure he is in good health and trade him in, i feel he is better suited for a bigger tank do to it being so skiddish. And the high finned banded shark was sold to us with a little misinformation, we were told that it was fine for our tank setup and later learned that our tank setup was not optimal for it. But we have had him for several months and is thriving nicely.

[Red]

I guess you were way misguided on the hifin loach. They like to be in groups, they are all wild caught and like to in cool water with faster flow. The grow pretty big. I dont consider that "thriving" when you don't have groups or a fast flowing or even some what cool water.
I am glad you know where your fish go when they outgrow the tank though.

[lobsternoob]

I imagine that your stocking makes for a really cool looking tank. But even if you have a great buyback program with your LFS I still don't think these fish will grow or color out to their full potential in this environment. I don't mean to be a jerk, but some of those fish i would not consider to mesh well, unless they were in a HUGE tank. Like an elephant nose with just about anything, they're so shy and seem to get picked on more than even ghost knives, but if you can get it to work that's super sweet.

[lobsternoob]

I read a bit about elephant noses, and maybe I am wrong, just my experience with them, i had one for only about 4 months, was that it got picked on endlessly by anything i put in with it. Almost all of the fish you have I've never kept, so i guess i don't really know what I'm talking about(blush)

[Red]

Its hard to get them food lobster, and they get a good size and they like groups. Once you get them to start eating, they are pretty easy to keep.

[Oscar_freak12321]

Ah, red tail chalceus. I haven't seen anyone talk about these in a long time. I've seen some at my lfs and I might just buy some. I've had some before by themselves and they are quite interesting.