Elephant Nose Fish Click here to shop online for an Elephant Nose Fish from us.
This video shows an Elephant Nose, which is a member of the group of fish called Mormyrids. Notice that this fish's long black probe is quite flexible and controlled by the fish in this video.
Scientific Name Gnathonemus petersi
Comments A group of Elephant Noses, like the ones shown in the picture below with twenty or more young fish, can live in a bare aquarium.
We recommend you keep one Elephant Nose or several but not a few. If you keep 2, 3, or 4 Elephant Noses together in the same aquarium, the strongest one will often make the others miserable. In a group with 6 or more the stronger Elephant Noses become less aggressive.
Elephant Noses will do better, if each one has a cave or a piece of plastic pipe for a home. Be sure the rocks, pieces of pipe, and everything else you put in your aquarium are not contaminated. Click here for more about avoiding contamination.
Elephant Noses are very peaceful and interesting fish. The probe below their mouth is not really a nose but is a very sensitive electric organ that is very good at finding small worms in dark or murky water. If you put a small ball of tinfoil in the aquarium, the Elephant Noses will play with it. This may be due to the electrical properties of the tinfoil.
Elephant Noses are members of a group of fishes called Mormyrids. Click here to read a brief article from the Encyclopedia Britannica about this group of fish. The article has links on it to other interesting articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Here is a group of Elephant Noses for sale in our facility. Click here for more about buying Elephant Noses from us. These are very interesting fish.
The picture above shows a group of about twenty Elephant Noses in a bare glass aquarium in our facility with no gravel and a few box filters. These Elephant Noses were eating well, complete acclimated, and ready to be shipped to customers.
Mormyrid Brains
The Mormyrids are a rather large group of fishes
that are very interesting fish to keep in aquarium.
Their ancestors all lived in Africa, and they all have large brains, are highly intelligent,
and popular among advanced aquarists.
Recommended Diet Live Black Worms and other live or frozen foods. Click here for more about Black Worms. Click here for more about feeding fish.
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Compatibility Keep one or several Elephant Noses but not just a few as discussed above on this page. African Black Knifefish, Synodontis Catfish, and Baby Whales are good tank mates for Elephant Noses, which are also often kept in aquariums with Clown Loaches, Gouramis, and Angels. Click here to read more about several other groups of compatible fish.
Size and Life Span Elephant Noses can grow to be 14" long, but they rarely grow bigger than 9" in an aquarium. They can live for 6 to 10 years, and sometimes longer.
Gallery of Pictures
Just above, a nice Elephant Nose, measuring about 5" long, when one of us took this picture of one of our fish, swimming in one of our aquariums.
Links to Other Web Sites Click here to go to another website where you can hear an Elephant Nose emitting electrical pulses, and get information about how to buy inexpensive equipment to listen to your Elephant Nose.
Click here for more information about electrical discharges from another Mormyrid fish, where it says, "The electric organ discharges of the Mormyrid electric fish may be described as having two parts: a relatively fixed Electric Organ Discharge (EOD) waveform, and a variable sequence of pulse intervals (SPI). The fixed EOD waveform is controlled by the anatomy and physiology of the electric organ; the variable sequence of intervals is controlled by the pacemaker in the brain."
Click here for information about the interesting Electrical Fishes of North-Eastern Gabon, where it says, "The EODs of the Mormyrid fishes shown here are all from the Ivindo River and surrounding streams of North-Eastern Gabon. Each species has a species-typical EOD waveform which is illustrated by one or two example traces."
I have a few questions regarding the elephant nose. On your web site you said they like to have a pipe as a home. I was just wondering what kind of pipe you mean. How big should the pipe be?
Should I have more than one pipe if I were to get more than one elephant nose? Should I have more than one pipe if I just have one elephant nose? Should the pipe just be like a PVC pipe or something else?
I appreciate your help.
Reply. Hello. For many years we put pieces of PVC pipe in the aquariums in our facility with Elephant Noses. We bought the pipe with a 2" or 3" diameter in 10 foot lengths at Home Depot, and this pipe was very inexpensive.
Then we took a saw and cut the pipe into pieces about 10" long. So the pieces would be long enough for the Elephant Noses to get completely inside the pieces of pipe. Next we took medium grit sandpaper and sanded the rough cut ends of the pieces of pipe to prevent the Elephant Noses from getting cut or scratched by the rough ends left by the saw.
Our Elephant Noses usually stayed inside the pipes, and the pipes seemed to reduce the stress on the Elephant Noses. We kept at least one pipe for each Elephant Nose, so each Nose had it's own home.
But we have now decided to recommend ornaments for aquariums that are specifically labeled for use in aquariums. The pieces of PVC pipe don't have such a label, so we no longer recommend them.
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