Help feeding Bamboo shark

c1m1edgar

c1m1edgar

Registered Member
Sep 5, 2006
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:idea: I have an 60x60 aquarium apx 300gal. ,my sg-1.023,am0,ni0,na0-3ppm,temp80,my shark is apx 7in long she has not eaten scince i recived her from exoticfish.com. i acclimated her drip for 2 hours, she seems to be ok in my tank. i have offered her some fresh frozen squid, i cut the tips of the tentacle and offered it to her, she seems interested but will not eat any info greatly app.
 
Sharks are notorious for not eating. I would try to offer as many different foods as I can, and put them on a feeder stick and wiggle them to make it look like they're alive.
 
yes, as Freddy said, it's very common for newly acquired sharks not to eat. I work at a Marine Lab, and one of my colleagues hatched some baby catsharks (in the same family as your bamboo shark) to study their growth rates. They hatched out of the egg cases, but she could never get them to eat enough to stay alive. Not a single one made it past the age of a few weeks, and she gave up. This was in a flow-through tank with fresh seawater input, too (so it's like getting a water change all the time).

I'm pretty much against the keeping of sharks in home aquaria, because they never do as well as they would in the wild. But that's a story for another day...
 
Age of my shark?

She is about 7in long.a bamboo catshark(chiloscyllium punctatum) she was sent to me from exoticfish.com,could her age have something to do with why she is not eating? :(
 
maybe. most young animals in the wild die long before they reach maturity. I bet the figures for those in captivity aren't as good as most people would like to think.

maybe being shipped in a box stressed her out, too.
 
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Yeah shipping is always stressful i can only imagine how it impacted her as a shark. I just hope she pulls through.i have spent many years developing as much of a natural habitat as i can for my many species of fish and coral and have NEVER lost an animal and i hope it stays that way, yet ive never had this species of shark before.
 
c1m1edgar said:
i have spent many years developing as much of a natural habitat as i can for my many species of fish and coral and have NEVER lost an animal
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For your sake, I hope she does, too. It sounds like you've invested a lot of time and effort (not to mention emotional investment) into your home projects.

I had wanted a baby bamboo catshark, too, at one point. My Master's degree thesis is on the diet and feeding of their deepsea relatives, the brown catshark (Apristurus brunneus) and the filetail catshark (Parmaturus xaniurus), so I thought I would be prepared. After doing the research, though, it just doesn't seem they do well in home tanks, especially not square ones. If they have round ones where they can swim continuously, they seem to be more content. Still, no matter how much space we have for them, it will never replicate nature.
 
Thanks for your advice, you are very right, i wish i would had talked to more people before deciding to adopt an bamboo shark-or any other shark for that matter the poor thing has undergone so much stress! wish we could set em all free!
 
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