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While voting for FP on AquaRank, I found a link to this:

Buster Cam

A web cam pointed at an aquarium with a Red Tailed Catfish in it.

Judging by the size I'd say it's a juvenile ... looks as if it's only 18 inches long ...

Ah, says at the bottom of the page that Buster is 17½ inches long, and will eventually reach about 4 feet. Hope this guy has the money for the colossal aquarium that fish will need!



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Wow... they are truely some of the most beautiful fish ever!
I really do hope the aquarist can provide him a big enough home. My LFS has a redtail in a display tank (someone bought one thinking it would be cute, and quickly realized they couldn't care for it in their 55 gallon tank so they brought it in), and he's been there for about 2-3 years now and is over 2 feet long, and residing in a 180+ gallon tank (which is technically too small for this monster, but it's seriously the best they can do for him, but at least the filtration is adaquate). I'm happy I get to see one of these amazing beautiful fish all the time just by going to the LFS, but I get very angey when I see babies for sale, knowing that the average fish keeper simply cannot adaquately house one.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

The aquarium he is currently in doesn't seem to be too big. I have been checking it out periodically for the past 30 minutes and he is ALWAYS in view To me, that means he has nowhere to move He's a gorgeous fish though

-Josh

hello i am rick the owner of buster. yes i know how big he will get. he is in a 100 gal tank now soon to be a 300 gal@ 8 feet. we need to have it build so it can go where this tank is so we can keep him on cam. he is sitting at the back in the day time because he is nocturnal he is putting his head under the driftwood to hide from the light.At night time nothing is safe in the tank.lol not even the powerhead.

I think the buster cam is great! Its cool for people like me who can't have a catfish that gets 4 feet. I can just watch buster.

*Kristin*

Glad to hear that he is a happy lil monster. I didn't realize they were nocturnal fish. Keep up the great work, he looks great It really must be the camera angle because the tank doesn't look that long. On second look though, the driftwood is very long. Hope I didn't offend ya. Sorry

-Josh

I think the cam is dangerous. It makes me want a catfish that is 4'. Right after I actually have cash for an 8' tank.

THANK YOU. If you look at his fins the health of Buster is the best of any fish I have seen. Fins are a tail tell sign of the health of a fish. If the fins are torn or worn looking then the fish has a problem and as you can see Busters fins are in excellent shape. The tank that he is in will be too small from him in less than a year, but for now is more than enough room from him. He likes to hang out in one end during the day because he is a camera hog, amoung other things. He knows that people are looking at him and he loves it. When people come into the apartment he will push himself flat agains the glass so that people can rub his belly. He loves to interact with people. All the kids in the apartment block come and take turns feeding and petting him. And yes I am the caretaker of the apartment block so I don't go anywhere. The camera view on the tank is a little strange, it doesn't point at the front of the tank like most people would do but at the side of the tank and only shows part of the tank, that is one reason it looks to be a little small, but trust me, it's not. I love my fish and would never keep in a tank where he couldn't move freely. And no, no one has upset me, I very much enjoy haveing people giveing me their feed back and opinions. I am also very happy to answer any questions anyone might have for Buster. I might not always be able to get back to you right away, but I will answer as soon as I am able.

What an appropriate name

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I have to say that there may come a time when even an 8 foot aquarium is going to be a tad cramped for that guy ... unless it's 8 feet square at the base, in which cse you're going to face some interesting civil engineering problems just assembling the aquarium, let alone siting it and setting it up ... an 8ft x 8ft x 3ft aquarium will be 1400 US gallons or so, and once set up with appropriate decor, will tip the scales at around two and a half tons.

I can also imagine that water changes and gravel vacs on a tank that size are going to be a colossal logistical undertaking - even if you only change 10% of the water each time, you'll be taking 140 gallons out and putting 140 gallons of fresh water in - lugging 280 gallons in buckets is going to be one hell of a crash course in bodybuilding!

Oh, and you've already discovered even at this size that heaters and filter tubes need protecting against the catfish's attentions ... imagine the level of armour plating you'll need to protect your equipment once he gets close to 4 feet ...

Buster's food bill is going to be something else I'd shudder at. But then I don't have the funding for a project on this scale (sigh) ... one aspect of Buster you're doubtless acquainted with is the fact that instead of testing things first to see if they are edible, Red Tailed Cats have a habit of swallowing first, then regurgitating inedible items, which makes decor selection an interesting exercise too ... I've even heard of a Red Tail that tried to swallow a house brick before today, which gives an indication what these fishes are capable of ...

Plus, given how much ammonia he'll be dumping out the back end (along with enough faeces to require a dredging operation in your tank, let alone a gravel vac) the filtration system needed when he IS big will constitute a piece of industrial plant! However, if you're able to afford all of this and set it up, I take my hat off to you ... just be careful about letting the kids play with him once he's around 4 feet, because at that size he might decide to swallow one of them!

Incidentally, one of the editorial team from Practical Fishkeeping magazine visited the Amazon recently, and saw one of these fishes in a marketplace with its head lopped off ready to be sold as food to whoever among the locals cared to purchase it ... according to him, this fish would have been six feet long if it still had its head attached ... here's the quote from page 31 of the February 2003 issue, covering a collecting trip to Peru:

Back on dry land we paid our travel guide and asked him to show us the dead fish in the market. The stench was unbelievable, but well worth the look. There were wild Oscars with the most striking coluration especially around the eyespots, various large characins including Pacu, and catfish in abundance. It has to be said that catfish were perhaps the most commonly caught fish offered to the locals as food. The catfish that we saw included some Doradids, possibly a species of Hassar, shovel-nosed catfishes such as Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum (Tiger Shovelnose) and the largest Red-Tailed Catfish that I have ever seen which would have been over 182 cm/6' long if the head had still been intact!

I can scan the article for anyone who wants to read it by the way

What quite a few people forget (though hopefully you, as Buster's owner, haven't!) is that the Amazon is a colossal body of water, and there is plenty of room in there for huge fishes. The 500 mile stretch from the river delta inland is so deep and so wide that it is possible to sail a Nimitz Class nuclear aircraft carrier up it ... parts of that stretch are so wide you can't see the opposite bank, and the river looks more like the ocean in size ... indeed, Manaus, the inland port of Brazil, is 2,000 miles inland, yet can still be reached by large ocean-going steamships ... here is a Google Maps image of the Amazon Delta]http://maps.google.com/?ll=-1.126026,-51.361084&spn=2.251617,3.955078&t=h[/link] (notice the scale bar at bottom left) and [link=here is a Google Maps image of Manaus (again, note the scale bar at bottom left). Bear in mind that when you add up the assorted large rivers that feed into the Amazon itself, a dozen or more of which are over 1,000 miles long each on their own and are navigable by bona fide ships, not just boats, the resulting volume of water is immense - fully twenty per cent of the entire world's supply of fresh water flows through the Amazon and its feeder rivers. That is a volume on the order of a trillion gallons ... no surprise, therefore, that you can find big fishes living in it!

Time for some more links I think!

This page shows a Red Tail at a UK dealers in a 1500 UK gallon setup ... which it shares with some other big bruisers ... the guy who runs the place is Sean Evans, one of the UK's foremost 'large oddball' keepers, whose own personal collection includes a 2ft Leiarus pictus, a 26 inch Clown Knife Fish and a big Erythrinid Wolf Fish ... he's in regular contact with Richard Hardwick, another UK 'big oddball' specialist who has a pair of Electric Eels and a 16-inch Hoplias lacerdae Wolf Fish that will hit 30 inches in due course and which is capable of amputating a man's arm at the elbow when adult ... so you're in respectable company if you can afford to give Buster a decent home!

Some more pages that illustrate the size of this beast are:

Giant Catfish Of The amazon

Catfishing In Brazil

Have fun with that guy ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Ok OkI am doing it been out pricing pond liners and i am getting one 4x8. When I start setting it up we will have it on cam so every one can see. I just thought you all might like to keep a look out on buster cam for updates
and a thank you to the one that posted the link on this site we always like the traffic.

Thank you so much for posting that Calli. Buster rocks!!!!


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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

On the subject of monster fish and tanks...

At the 2 Big Al's warehouses where I live (British Columbia) there are two 2k gallon display tanks. Inside each are 3-4 white tip sharks + nurse sharks (I think those are what they were), giant moray eel, a grouper (i think), and some other fish.

What's even more amazing is that one of the 2k gallon tanks was for sale. It was cube shapped, and the base was made of like stone and cement, very beautiful. How much was it? $16,000 Canadian! Costs about as much as an average, new car? If one was to buy it, would you need a liscense or some sort to keep sharks in it? They were about 4 feet and the moray eel was even longer. The sharks didn't look like they had much space to swim in except in circles, and the moray eel would only stay in its rock cave thingy.

http://bigalscanada.com/sharkfeeding/sharkfeeding.htm
Videos of the shark and some of the occupants with them. This is during feeding actually, which is pretty crazy. Went to one before, got pretty wet

interesting

An indoor pond would be ideal for Buster when he gets bigger. Do you hang out on MonsterFishKeepers.com at all, buster? They have some excellent forums on building super-large tanks on a budget, including a whole sub-section on indoor ponds. Even a holding tank like the ones used at fish farms would be good as a transitional tank.
I hope we havn't completely overloaded your bandwidth on the site. I know I keep going back...

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

Bandwidth we have lots 19,000 pageviews yesterday. And yes the pond is a go (so my wife says lol) 8x4x2 with a fountain. The cam i use is a IP Kamera V2.34 yes it has it own 6 mag modem just for the cam. In the new pond the cam is going to be in a aquaruim under water just to make it interesting.and yes i do go to MonsterFishKeepers.com it is a great site

I have added it to my favourites and keep visiting!

I think buster is brilliant!

GFG

_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

I believe someone on that Monster Fish Forums constructed a truly enormous 50,000 gallon aquarium ... however, to do so, he had to excavate a new basement with a 50 ton excavator in order to provide a place to put it!

Even an indoor pond is going to be, shall we say, an interesting exercise ... finding a way of ensuring that the rampant humidity doesn't destroy things is going to be an issue that consumes a lot of time, thought and possibly money. However, if you ARE successful in getting a big tropical indoor pond up and running for Buster, especially if it has a glass panel for underwater viewing, then again, I shall raise my hat to you!

By the way, Buster is a very expressive fish. At times it is very tempting to perform the mental insertion of speech balloons with suitably chosen captions upon the images of his activities!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

the liner is orded it is going to be 8x4x2 that will do for nowthe glass for the cam is being made shough be in next week. The filter is what i got to work out

Is buster in a display tank in a petshop or live at someone's house?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~