Bullhead Catfish As An Aquarium Fish?

[fishRfriends]

At our local pond today we saw a bullhead catfish guarding maaannnnnyy catfish fry. We scooped some up in a cup to check them out and they are just too adorable. We put them back and when we got home we got to thinking. We have a 75 gallon aquarium to which we have not added fish for quite a while becuase we want to switch over to a large-fish tank (right now we have an assortment of small tropical fish). We read up a little about keeping bullheads as aquarium fish but there isn't too much info, although there were a few posts about it being done on this forum. We live in Connecticut and I checked out the Dep site and I didn't find any regulations against keeping them from the wild, but I wasn't too sure what too look under so I'm not positive. So my question is, would it be ok to catch some of the fry (they range from about 1/4 inch to an inch in size) and raise them up for a 75 gallon tank? For a couple of hours we have done alot of reading about temperature, filtration, food and the like and it seems like they would be an ok aquarium fish, especially since they seem to max at less than a foot, but I have never attempted anything like this before so I am just asking . Thanks for any help!

 

[Tolak]

http/forum.nanfa.org/index.php?act=idx

They specialize in these sort of fish.

 

[fishRfriends]

Ohh perfect!! Thanks!

 

[rdd1952]

Depending on the species, they can get to 18". They will also be very messy fish so 6 to 8 fully grown ones even at less than a foot would be about fully stocked unless you have great filtration. It would basically be the quivalent of having common plecos or goldfish in the tank. I would think the same criteria generally used to calculate stocking for goldfish would apply to them: 20 gallon for the first one and 10 more gallon for each additional fish. That would mean about 6 would be a full stock in a 75 gallon, allowing for displacement of water by substrate and decorations.