Elephantnose

[zombieworm]

Hiya all.

Does anyone else have elephantnose fish? 

Rosie (Rose O'Malley)

Petey  (Peg-Leg Pete)

[zombieworm]

Ok, so no-one seems terribly interested in elephantnose fish, but they are my all time fav, so I'm going to keep posting anyway - lol.

I had been waiting for more to come into the country, as I wanted to add to the two I had, and they finally came. I bought another 4, which came a couple of days ago, so now have a nice little group of six. They have settled in really well, and are very lively. 

It took almost a month to train Petey to eat out of my hand, and now every time I stick my hand in the tank to clean etc., he gets all excited looking for food. But the new ones saw Petey eating out of my hand, and within 3 days they were all doing it, and even the discus and featherfin sydontis are joining in! It is so cool!

So here is a pic of my new ENF.

 

[Adrienne]

I've only ever seen them as singles in a tank and they look great as a group

[zombieworm]

They are a whole different critter in a group than singly. Singly they tend to be shy and hide a lot, but in a group they are really active - even with the lights on. They are really reambunctious, chasing each other around, laying ambushes - not fighting just playing. They remind me a lot of the yoyo loaches in how boisterous and playful they are. They are also really curious, trying to squeeze into every crevice, trying to get their heads into every ornament, checking out every nook and cranny.

There was a huge fight when they were first introduced, as you would expect. But now they all get along great. The original two are so much happier with more. One of the original ones is a little under half the size of the new ones, but he is still part of the group, and doesn't get bullied. When there were only two, he did get bullied. It is really worth having them in a group.

At night, the featherfin sydontis - which is the same size as the biggest one - joins in with them and swims around as part of the school.

[Hecticity]

Cool! Video? What do you feed them? I have been quite keen in the past to get some after seeing some youtube videos of larger schools, but have only seen them eating bloodworm and wondered how easy it would be to get them onto dry food as am not sure how good that would be as a long term diet.

[zombieworm]

They don't usually take to dry food - one of the reasons they are often considered a "difficult" fish. They don't breed in captivity - not even for commercial breeders, so all the ones you ever see in shops are wild caught, and wild caught fish that eat primarily insects and invertabrates generally find it very difficult to transition to dry food. But in saying that, when I started feeding the discus specialized discus food (Hikari Discus Bio-Gold), Petey did take a bit of an interest in that. I feed them a mix of frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp, and daphne.

Possibly once you have them hand feeding, you could mix dried bried shrimp or dried daphne or something like the discus food in with the thawed bloodworms, see if you can add variety that way. But I think there is enough variety available in frozen food to keep them healthy. Even with just those three frozens, that is more variety than my dwarf puffers get - the little buggers flatly refuse to eat anything other than snails! Not even bloodworms or brine shrimp!

Getting the ENF to hand feed is fairly important if they are in community tank, since everthing else in the tank loves the fozen foods too, and your ENF could easily miss out and end up starving. I feed all the other fish first, that way if any are ravenously hungry they have usually stuffed themselves before the 'good stuff' shows up. But they figure it out pretty quickly and start waiting for the good stuff - lol.

Hand feeding at least ensures the ENF get some of it before everything else starts grabbing for what's dropping down. When I have finished hand feeding, I turn the tank lights off, and since the ENF are nocturnal feeders, they will immediately start snuffling around looking for what fell, and the fish that aren't night feeders back off, so there isn't as much competition (depending on what other nocturnal feeders you have).

They are such a wonderful fish - they get very friendly and interactive. Petey knows when it is getting close to feeding time and positions himself in "the feeding spot" and waits. When he sees my hand come in he gets so excited, and rushes up waggling his whole body like an over-excited puppy 

[Fruju]

Really cool stock choice, groups of elephantnose are not common to see in the hobby. They get fairly large right?

[gligor]

What an awesome looking tank, I particularly like all the plants in it, and the ENFs are looking great - especially in a group!

[zombieworm]

Depends on where you get your info - ok, how big they ACTUALLY get doesn't depend on where you get your info, just how big you THINK they get - lol. When I first decided to get them, I had read they get 6 inches, then after I got my first two I read somewhere they get up to 9 inches, but generally stay smaller - ok, I can still deal with that. Just recently - after I got the other 4 - I read they get up to 14 inches! Of course my first thought was "OMG I hope not!" I guess we will find out.

There is so much conflicting info about them out there. I heard they are really difficult, that it is really hard to get them to eat at all,  that they are really sensative to any kind of change in the water, that you can't keep them with boisterous tank mates, and that tend to drop dead at the drop of a hat. Thats why I only got two originally - I wanted to make sure I could keep them alive and well first.  I also heard conflicting stories about whether you could keep two together or not.

So my experience with them is as follows:

If you keep only two, the bigger one will pick on the smaller one, but as long as the tank is large, well planted, and has good hidey holes, it isn't a big issue - a bit of grumpiness, but no real nastiness. My little dude stayed healthy, with no signs of stress, and they did spend some time together. But I don't think I would keep two together in a smaller tank.

They really like being in a group. Although they do each go find their own place to sleep - in a log ornament, in a bolt hole in the rock pile, cradled in amongst the thick plants - when they are awake, they spend most of their time all together, playing or foraging. Singly (or in pairs) they tend to be shy, and a bit lonely, tending to only come out after the lights are off. But in a group they are active, lively, and boisterous, even when the lights are on.

As far as boisterous tank mates go, I originally had my three large yoyo loaches in that tank, and Petey - the bigger one - use to hang out with them all the time. He had no problem head-butting them if they got too annoying, and he joined in on their chases and games. I had to take the yoyos out though as they were stressing the discus, and Petey became a lot more reclusive after that. Now having a group, I can see why he liked the yoyos so much - they are very similar in their antics. The ENF don't hassle or chase the discus or other fish though, like the yoyos did.

They are fussy eaters, only eating live or frozen foods not dried or prepared foods, but there are a lot of fish out there like that, so I didn't really see that as a problem. My bumblebee gobies are fussy eaters, my puffers are fussy eaters, if you feed the tropheus the wrong thing the get bloat and die (I've never had that happen as I'm careful what I feed mine), and don't get me started on marine fish! But as long as you stick to the live and/or frozen, they are fine, and are very entusiast eaters. As I said before, hand feeding is important if they are in a community tank, but once you have that down, there is no problem, and it isn't that difficult to get them to do it.

As far as water parameters and water changes go, I have found them to be no more difficult than any other fish. Not like the discus, which seem to drop dead if you just look at them wrong - discus are just one of those fish I can't seem to keep. The ENF don't seem bothered by the ph change at water change time, they don't care about the water going in being cold, and they are fine with fortnightly water changes. All my tanks are very stable and even after a month the water parameters are still really good, but I do waterchanges fortnightly anyway.

[zombieworm]

Thanks gligor . I just recently re-scaped it. Previously I had everything spread out along the sides and back, but I moved all the rocks into a pile in one corner (the zodiac loaches and green phantom pleco love it), added another big piece of bogwood, and put all the wood in a line down the centre. The ENF chase each other up and down and around the wood, and I see a lot more of all the other fish too (including the catfish) because they have something to hang around in the centre of the tank now, rather than all hiding behind things at the back and sides. The Indian Waterfern on the surface has gone insane, which the African butterfly fish love.

[Fishluva]

WoW! Cool...

 

[calculator]

Looking good. I have always wanted to keep them, but they have never got along with my other fish.

 

[zombieworm]

Really? What fish did have with them?

[zombieworm]

Having finally figured out how to do video on the tablet, upload to YouTube, and link it here, here is a video of the elephantnose at feeding time. I couldn't get one of the handfeeding - there is only me here, but this is just after the hand feeding, and they are all snuffling around looking for the food that dropped.

Gligor, you asked where the elephantnose were in the African Butterfly fish video - they go to sleep mid morning, and wake up just before dinnertime, so here they are now 

 

[gligor]

They are really cool looking fish. Thanks for sharing. 

[zombieworm]

The other day I saw Elephant nose fish advertised at a different place than I have bought all my others from, and they were substantially cheaper than my others cost, so I thought I would go ahead and get a couple - out of curiosity over the low price as much as anything, and because with all but one of the discus now gone, there would be room in the tank for another two EN. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I waited with anticipation for them to arrive.

And arrive they did - healthy, active... and teeny tiny itsy bitsy, coming in at just 1" (2.5cm) I didnt know they came that small! The congo tetra youngsters I got the same time were the same size, maybe even a little bit bigger.  All my others are between 5" and 7", with Jack - the baby of the group - at a "tiny" 3 1/2".

Like Africa, the African tank is WAY to dangerous for them (OK, so it's only African above the ground level, the plecos and bottom-hugging catfish are all South American). They like hanging around the surface floating plants, but in the tank the African Butterfly fish would quickly make a meal of them. If they decided to hang around the bottom instead, there are 2 spotted dorydids, and 2 chocolate striped dorydids that would find them a delectable snack. And if they managed to avoid the top and bottom of the tank, once the lights go out there is 7 inches (18cm) of Featherfin Sydontis that cruises back and forth through the middle like a hungry shark. I currently have them in a breeding net in the African tank until I decide what to do with them. 

They are just sooo adorable though! The brine shrimp and bloodworms are to big for them, so I am feeding them frozen daphne (luckily I had some on hand). They also seem really keen on the Hikuri Gold Discus pellets, so I might see if I can get some even smaller pellets for them, as those are a little big for them at the moment.