Madtoms for darter tank?
Started by
Guest_Leo1234_*
, Sep 28 2014 02:17 PM
11 replies to this topic
#3 Guest_Skipjack_*
Posted 28 September 2014 - 05:27 PM
People always want to do this, and it is fine if you are okay with losing darters here and there. Think about where most madtoms live. In riffles under rocks. Think about their mouths. Fairly large. What else besides invertebrates lives in riffles under rocks? Darters. What do adult madtoms love to eat? Darters. One decent size darter provides more calories in one bite than foraging for mayflies all day, with a fraction of the amount of calories burned up during the foraging process.
#7 Guest_Leo1234_*
Posted 28 September 2014 - 07:41 PM
I find it so funny that something so small could wipe out a whole aquarium. They really are the monsters under your bed. I feel like someone here will make a horror film about catfish now after reading this thread... unless it is too main stream... sorry. I had to say that joke.
Edited by Leo1234, 28 September 2014 - 07:42 PM.
#10 Guest_Skipjack_*
Posted 28 September 2014 - 09:32 PM
I think Michael has had some pretty bad madtom experiences. Mine have been more mild. They will gladly gobble anything that will fit in their mouths, and darters are on the bottom where the madtoms are. Smaller species will do less damage. I kept them in tanks with common and easy to collect species, so if some went missing, I just replaced them.
#11 Guest_BenCantrell_*
Posted 28 September 2014 - 10:13 PM
I keep a tadpole and a brindled madtom in my community tank with a bunch of darters, and they're pretty mellow. I've never noticed a darter missing, though I'm sure one or two probably got eaten at some point. Same as Matt, they're all common species so they can be replaced.
#12
Posted 29 September 2014 - 06:43 AM
I don't really know enough about the genus to put any science behind this, but I do think there are species that are more prone to fish eating than others. I had an Ozark madtom for a long time... Collected with some yoke darters and never seemed to be a fish eater. He had a totally different shaped mouth than say the margined madtoms of death. They have very bullhead sort of mouths and seem to be much more predatory. I wonder if there are madtom sub-genus or clades that have been studied that might show this dietary and/or mouth morphology differences?
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