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Hey guys, I have 4 Iridescent Sharks, which here in Costa Rica we call "Tiburon Tailandes" (Thai Shark in english)...

I was wondering, what could I provide them for food aside from the usual stuff, u know something different, some kind of meat or something i could feed them.

Any help is appreciated.

Hi there,
couple things you may not know, Irridescent Sharks
are a catfish not a shark, so will eat anything.
They grow to be 3 to 5 feet long, and need a tank around
3.5 feet wide by 12 feet long in order to just survive in a tank.

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Yup, Ive heard they actually eat them in Asia poor thingies...

Mine are relative still small and will look to upgrade them to a larger tank in a few months.

Of course, living in Costa Rica you have another option - dig a pond. It's warm enough there for them to live outdoors year round, since it just so happens that many of our favourite tropical fishes do precisely that in your native land ...

The one BIG piece of advice I would hand out, however, is this: do NOT release them into local native watercourses. The last thing you want is big, predatory alien catfish species snacking on the native fishes. Learn from the bad experience Florida has had with Clarias batrachus being released there, and be good and keep those Pangasius captive.

Incidentally, if memory serves (unless Adam knows better) you're the first member I've seen here from that country. Welcome aboard, and be prepared to be deluged with requests for shots of watercourses near your home and pictures of your native fishes in the wild


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Hey Cali, actually Im the second person to join Fishprofiles.com.

Long story short, I have been visiting fishprofiles for a couple years now but never actually joined the forum and started posting till my friend, Red Phantom joined in several weeks ago.

He was looking for good websites to look at so I directed him this way and joined shortly after Red P did.

Hi there!

Just cruising by, saw that you were talking about me, thought I`d say hello.

Would be happy to send pictures from the tropics upon request. Greatly appreciatte the input provided by all of you at FP!

All the best,

James

I thought it was weird that there were no Costa Ricans and then, all of a sudden, there were two...

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Hi,
Take a look at these photos.

http://www.jjphoto.dk/akvariefoto/artikler/artikel_3.htm
http://www.jjphoto.dk/fish_archive/warm_freshwater/pangasius_sanitwongsei.htm

Hey Cali, actually Im the second person to join Fishprofiles.com.

Duly noted. But are you digging a pond for your big catfish to be?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

LOL, Katie yup...that would certainly explain why huh

This hobby is very addictive.. Im in the process of setting up a 50gallon right now...and its taken A LONG time me but has also been tons of fun.

Hmmm, a pond? How difficult would that be?

ANY DIY pond manuals around the internet?

Plenty of manuals.


Ponds are easy. Dig hole, line, fill with water, install filters, insert fish.

Some things to consider though are that since you have non aquarium fish it will have to be very large. In fact I really don't think "very" covers how large the pond will have to be. The dimensions given before are really the bare minimum. Kind of like saying you need a 2foot by 2 foot by 6 foot room to keep a human.
If you are seriously considering the pond, go for the biggest one you can build/afford. It'll be better to go too big (if that's even possible ) than too small.

Easiest thing might be to do what one member did a while back, rent a backho and dig a pool sized hole in your yard!.

Good luck, I hope you can provide the pets you bought a proper home .
^_^

I have my shovel in hand and I`m ready to start digging, all I need is Tiburon Tailandes`s permission to start digging in his backyard /:'

The one thing I would love to see is Winstons (my scottish terrier) reaction to a pond with big catfish.

That I would pay money to see.

Pond for a shoal of Pangasius ... ???

Hmm, going to be an interesting project. Not least because the pond will have to be about 3 feet deep minimum (nearer 6 feet toward the centre) and I'd say you're looking at something of the order of ... if you dig a square sided pond, each side will need to be around 25 feet. Put it in perspective, you'll be digging a pond that covers a larger area than the foundations of my entire house.

So, 25 x 25 x 6 feet ... that's 3,750 cubic feet of soil to shift. About 148 tons. Somehow I think Redphantom's shovel is going to need a little assistance ... Caterpillar D9 with excavator addon and a 50 ton dump truck being a good idea if you want the pond digging quickly.

Plus, living in Costa Rica, you might want to consider having that pond fenced off. Don't want a member of the local Cayman population turning up and deciding to call it home.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

1 Put down the shovel. All you need to do is go to the nearest university and aquire a human skull from the anthropology department.

2 Then you plant the skull in the backyard and 'find it' then call the police and tell them of your find.

3 The police will be around and will dig up a nice pond sized hole in your backyard after trying to find extra body parts!

But seriously, is this really practical? are you sure you have enough space in your yard to give up? do you have access for a front end loader to get to your backyard? do you need council permission to do it?

I wish you luck.

Perhaps another 'good' (for lack of a better word) example of the issues with introducing alien species into an ecosystem (no, not martian species) would be the introduction of the Nile Perch into Lake Victoria. Taken from wikipedia,
"The Nile perch was introduced to Lake Victoria, in East Africa, in the 1950s, and since then it has been fished commercially. It is attributed with causing the complete or near-extinction of several hundred native species..."

I just thought I would reiterate the point that they should NEVER be released into local waterways.

I wish I had the time, space, money, etc. to build a pond for fish in my backyard...

Perhaps one day but that is a tad beyond my reach about now

I`m going to need a bigger shovel!!

Seriously, foreign species being introduced to non native habitats is always bad news, the list is very long on the setbacks that it has caused to local populations of fauna and flora. In our countries Cocos Island located in the Pacific, pigs and cats were introduced in the island for housekeeping reasons, to the day the pigs are depleting local plant species and the cats are diminishing local bird populations, some of which are endemic to this island.

About the pond... planting evidence... not a bad idea I wonder if that works for pools as well!!

Good points to consider on the building of a pond. I have a pretty big backyard at home and the dimensions of that pond would put me and my dogs litterally in the dog house.
A pond that big in a country this small would require so many permits and the national maps would have to be redone in order to include that new body of water in the charts.

My backyard as big as it is would not be able to accomodatte such a pond. Further back the property extends itself down the steep slope of the Virilla river canyon. As mentioned, it is somewhat steep but there is certainly more room to work with. Any experience with ponds on slopping hillsides? Is it feesable to build a pond on a slope? I think given the terrain that I could look into creating a smaller pond of maybe 6 feet wide x 9 feet long x 3 feet deep. Is that a good size to work with and what fish species could I consider having in such a pond. My local water is in the range of GH of 3, ph of 7 and normal water temperature of 20 Celsius.

It would still be a long term project but I`ve always wanted a pond in my house.

Thanks in advance

James

Well I was thinking in terms of an isolated pond, as opposed to one that's connected to native watercourses, the idea being that your fishes don't enter the local ecosystem ...

However,the thought occurs to me that if ever I lived in a country like Costa Rica, building a pond for some of the native fishes would be a great idea. Quite which native fishes would be compatible in a pond small enough to fit in a back garden would require some research of course, but I'm sure that something could be found among the native fishes to go in there.

If memory serves, Dempseys are found in the wild in Costa Rica ... hmm, there's an idea, a Dempsey breeding pond ...

[Edited for typos]


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Sounds like a real nice idea to have some Jack Dempseys or some other native species in a breeding pond. Theres another type of cichlid native to our waterways that is called the tilapia, although not as nicely colored as the JD, it is an intresting fish and theres a lot of research done on it.

Certainly the pond would have to be independent from the water ways, but in countries as ours that have so much rainfall and are e to flooding, if a pond is close to a river or lake and flooding ocurrs then the fish can be introduced into the wild without intention. And the issue is an important one to consider and mention given its consequences.

Thanks for the enlightenment, a Jack Dempsey pond sounds real nice.