PolyptRus
Aquarium Advice Freak
About a month ago i acquired a pictus catfish i was aware they are poisonous but have read in my research on them that they do not readily sting and are quite docile. However ever since i got the fish i have had an unusual outbreak of nonexplanainable deaths among the tank mates of the pictus, this has never happened before and i make sure all my tanks are in prime conditions for my fish, the tank which holds the pictus is the only tank that my fish just seem to oddly die in. They don't just randomly die i will notice that they have horizontal scratches along their flanks which turn white some will have their eye damaged, and the skin on the body looks sore on some, one i had even noticed a very small puncture in the head. Initially when i notice a scratch on the body of a fish it will appear completely fine but as time passes the fish seems to weaken and become lethargic, they won't eat much, start moving slow, the breathing slows, and the scratches become worse. I have tried everything to treat them when this happens but they only seem to die. This has never happened until i got the catfish, and i have noticed the catfish will go up to a fish and look like it is scratching itself against the fish trying to injure the fish maybe? And it will repeatedly scrape its sides against the fish i really believe the pictus is killing my fish because the same fish i witnessed it scraping itself against now has a cloudy eye from being damaged as well as damaged scales and fins and its stopped swimming around so much and doesn't try to eat as much food as it once had. Anyone ever had a problem with a pictus poisoning their fish?