Catfish experts needed

I have a small 4" red tail cat aka "Mr. Whiskers" (Mr. in his name is to give him respect as the catfish of all catfish ) and am growing him up, but tank mates are nippy and territorial. Mr. Whiskers has lost about a 1/4" off one of his whiskers. Will this grow back?

I had catfish in the past and the whiskers did regrow but you may want to rethink who he is living with if they are nipping him.

Yes they will. I rescued 2 small syno cats with no whiskers no fins and patches of skin missing. They are nearly 100% fixed now, the pectoral spine is all that did not grow back.


But yes you need to move him, the picking is not good at all!

They'll grow back. And he'll grow back and seek revenge.

RTC's will get HUGE and are tank busters. I sure hope your plans call for a very big tank. ;o)

Thanks everyone this is good news.

James0816 wrote:

They'll grow back. And he'll grow back and seek revenge.

RTC's will get HUGE and are tank busters. I sure hope your plans call for a very big tank. ;o)

Yes I think they all know it and trying to eliminate the invitable before it happens.

Yes 390 in my future.

I used to breed South American Redtail Catfish. All of my stock went to Seaworld back in the mid 90's. When they are small they can be a bit fragile. I would remove them from your tank until he is a bit larger. Remember these fish can get large very fast. Plan on upgrading....

Yes, RTC's do get huge, used to have one myself. But I kind of disagree, to an extent, on removing him. I dont think you always have to remove a picked on fish, I think sometimes you can do some remedies that may fix it, if they dont work, then move him. When I first introduced mine to the tank, he was small, and I had a ton of pretty large aggressive fish. They picked on him and the same thing happened as yours. But what I did was started feeding more regularly, and more live to keep all my aggressives well fed. Not overfeeding, but I did bump it up, so some of their aggression went down. As we all know, full fat fish are happy fish. But I also made him his own little alcove that only he could really fit into, giving him a space for him to go when they were picking. After about 2 weeks, they all settled, the picking totally stopped and everyone was happy roomates again.
I love me some catfish, I am starting a new 55 gal up and first thing on my list, catfish!

they do love cover had one and was a nice pet he would come to the surface to feed and let me rub his belly br careful cause he will eae him self to death i put a couple dozen feeder goldfish in with him once didnt stop till he ate everyone thought he was going to die and they will grow very fast

I would make sure he has ample hiding places- so he can get away and relax a little.

Good luck

Julie