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again... i just bought another one...

Anyway he is only 4 inches, but im planning on creating a 525 custom next year and wondering...how much is too much? temperment wise.

I have seen plenty of videos or large electric catfish that are fine with other fishes. And this has always confused me as i saw this one video where a red tailed X tiger shovelnose was bothering a 16 inch electric catfish and nothing happened.

so what gives? i know that you shouldnt stock with fishes you arent worth losing, but how is stocking with an electric catfish possible. As i was under the impression that if something bothers it, or touches it, it will electric shock things in the tank.

o and i have seen another video of plecos sucking on a smaller electric catfish. And it makes me feel dumb that when i work with it, i wear rubber gloves

well dude i dont know to much on electric catfish sorry but on the rubber gloves part... well dont feel dumb better safe than sorry right?

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we dont know what to do.

Obviously the fish although almost constantly generating a charge at a low level doesnt fire at full voltage unless seriously annoyed or hunting. Its a big fish and doesnt always feel intimidated. It has muscular control over its abilities, and is not compelled to use them unless it wants to. Another fish wont get any kind of shock from a mere touch unless the catfish intends to give it one.

Its totally mood related, apart from those times when the fish to avoid muscle strains and aches simply fires off a shot as it contorts or exercises, or perhaps has a nervous jolt, which lets face it is gonna happen.

Besides its possible to earth a tank, even full of water, and the tank you were looking at might well have been earthed, taking the current away from the attacking fish. When heavily attacked I assume an electric cat would instinctively let fly. In a state of panic it might not even be able to control itself.

TBH though, you may well have seen vids of this fish in with other large species, but most of the owners wont care a lot about the fish they keep. Unless massively earthed keeping an electric cat with other fish is sooner or later gonna lead to the death of something. An american electric catfish (Electrophorus electricus )has some good voltage a 350 volt shock is not impossible, but if your talkingan african electric eel (Malapterurus electricus) here, at full size you can expect an average jolt of 450 volts, and repeated shocks at that! Parasilurus asota, the asian version can still muster up a damn good shock.

No one sane puts anything in with that. TBH its hard enough to insulate tank equipment properly.

Conversely though I had a basking light that fell into a turtle pond once, gave me a shock and not the turtles. Electricty doesnt always work the way you expect it to, and a few fish will be designed so that electricity does them comparatively little harm. End of the day though, its the luck of the draw.

Plus what happens the day you do get a serious shock, perhaps a heart attack or stroke, possibly soil yourself, or break the tank? You may find yourself living in fear of something living in your own home. Suddenly you may find the novelty long gone.

Are you sure you really want one of these things? An adult is a different league to a baby fish.

I'm pretty sure silurus asotus is not an notably electric catfish. Also eel and catfish are reversed .

That being said, it is simply a case of familiarity. If the fish in question is not alarmed, it probably wont discharge. Responsible keepers pretty much always keep these things alone and are cautious when dealing with the fish, but given a large enough and tame enough animal, the reaped rewards are similar to those encountered when keeping a large predatory cichlid.

There I was thinking that a recorded 30 Hz, output voltage range ˆ 400 V put it in the range of being fairly electric.

Silly me

Link? This is news to me.

I would seriously rethink even keeping one of these. I put them in the same catagory as the MEKONG....as in no way. Some fish just have no place in our tanks.

Present: L183, L114, L330, LDA33, L059, L340, L136, L399, Clown, Whip Tail

Past: L001, L239, L200, L134, L030, L110, L204, L260, LDA08, L226, Ancistrs sp3 albino as well as calico, L187 (sp2), Common Hypostomus punctatus

At my lfs... a truck crashed through the front windows of the store. It hit their display tank that had an electric cat in it and when the new emplyee went to pick it up it knocked him unconcious! They're definately know laughing matter. And on the subject of fish you shouldn't keep in a tank, at another lfs I was at I came across a 4" DIAMOND STURGEON. Who would get one of those, my dorm room is as long as a full grown adult!

ive seen those eels zap men time and time again...
i dont see the point in having a huge catfish that you cant keep anything with.

Still nothing on the avowedly electric s. asotus?

Anyways, it's probably the whole "monster" fishkeeping mantra subscription. If you can keep something that kills, it's cool. This is how you end up with mishoused pimelodidae, arrowana, pirhana, etc.

i have had one EC before around a 1.5 feet. i know they willget over a meter.

it is something about them that i find interseting, certainly i like testing on how to stock with them as again i do see them with plenty of other fishes, including that red tailed catfish that was trying to eat him.

Cupoflifenoodles, most of the references I have are not on the net, but if you actually want to pay for something with some references in , just hit google there are dozens, particularly in reference to chinese studies on their biology.To give you a clue look for studies on parisitology that looked into how nematode worms in particular survive being within an electric host. The species was studied extensively by manufacturers of enrofloxacin to see if their electric current inhibited their drug while in use. The relevance of this was commercial farming for the food industry. I cant find you a referenced work that I wouldnt have to pay for, and since the info I have is in scientific literature in paper form it makes it a little hard to share. Theree are referances of them being used in medieval times as a medicinal "aid" to sufferers of madness,palsy, epilepsy, and various other neurological diseases.Notably some of the patients are documented as recieving brain damage, and actually being killed under treatment, something that alludes to just how much electricity an adult can produce.In china the catfish are used as a type of primitive "electroacupunture" with the intention to relieve such conditions as bels palsey. Not that I fancy going through that even if I do get bels palsey! The BFOA also registers them as strongly electric catfish, distinct from rays and morymrids etc,which are categorised as mild, and capable of stunning prey. Lets face it , any fish capable of stunning another fish in water is capable of kicking you onto your butt.

Dude just cos you havent heard of it before doesnt make it not so. You didnt know plecs were capabable of above ground aestivation during drought until a few months ago, and that coming from a master on catfish?

Go look, if your interested , go check it out, it'll be fun. I dont need a reference every time you dont know something, thats for you to do.

"ive never heard of that" doesnt mean it aint so. I did try to find you a net accessable reference, but It aint happening for now. Just have to do your own homework Most of this general craziness and twisted research happened when the fish was still Parasilurus asota, so check under that name.

“Dude just cos you havent heard of it before doesnt make it not so. You didnt know plecs were capabable of above ground aestivation during drought until a few months ago, and that coming from a master on catfish?”

Yes, but that’s justified, seeing as how I am a loricariid fanatic. Only certain members of pterygoplichthyini and hypostomini (the latter is inferred) are capable of this and only to a limited degree. This ability is greatly exaggerated, however, and in fact, armbruster quotes them to be able to survive minimal desiccation for approximately thirty hours. Aestivation occurs primarily in secluded, water bound environments.
Honestly, I’m just fishing for a good debate-I enjoy such things. That being said, there are no real scientific references I have found through any medium (i.e. actual papers) that speak of electric ability in any siluriid (I went through the school database, which is linked to davis and CAS), much less s. asotus.
I know several individuals both irl and on such boards as monsterfishkeepers that own this fish. Of the three responses that were returned to me, none had had any experience with shocking. I am in the process of contacting several siluridologists (verbal creative license) regarding this, one of them being my current lab head. We shall see what is unearthed.
Best I can guess is that this fish is commonly used in laboratory tradition, and is regularly used in electric field testing, as it, along with many other silurids, are hyper-sensitive to electric signals, but do not generate any notable amount of their own. Somewhere down the line, this was probably misconstrued as these fish being able to generate electricity, and things snowballed from there.

Ah , but then there are records to them being used as a method of chinese medicine (primitive shock therapy) before the asian races went as far as africa, and a way before they ever hit the americas, so unless there is another major electric catfish the chinese could get hold of prior to about 1600, I assume it has to be the one.

Good point. Hmm...let's wait for a professional response, then.

Response by Dr. H. H. Ng

"There are studies that have shown S. asotus to be electroreceptive (i.e. they can detect minute electric currents), but they are not electrogenic like Malapterurus."

Jy your post about the guy being knocked unconscious (Posted 24-Sep-2007 14:08), is that for real? Maybe because the catty was in distress it was even more zap-ish. Yow!

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

i back LHG completely. please note, they are still fish, so you may get one that never zaps, and one that does it when feeding or generally being looked at..

Perhaps, but keep in mind this is a regularly researched fish...there are hundreds of articles of lab-initiated experimentation done on these animals, and that's just on JSTOR/google scholar alone. Any decently backed database probably has thousands (I don't want to hike back up to Moffit just to check this out). You'd think at least one would find some amount of electrogenic behavior--it's much less an issue of fishkeeping than it is pure science.

Just to add, after talking to a few other contacts, this fish is known in folklore to be an electric fish, capable of initiating seismological activity, especially in several Japanese cultures, where it is known as a deity. Just another possibility upon which the [IMO] myth of s. asotus and it's electric generating tendencies might be delineated.