Hi all.
My family has a 36 gallon tank with 3 fish: a 5 inch cichlid, a 2 inch pictus catfish, and a 1.5 inch algae eater (unsure what kind). The smaller fish have been in the tank for at least a year, and the cichlid has been here for 6 to 7 years (and probably more, we inherited the tank from the previous owners of the house). The cichlid is pretty peaceful, but curious, so she will chase others once in a while, but in a very friendly fashion.
Two days ago we've started noticing some weird chasing activity between the catfish and algae eater. Dad says that usually the catfish would chase the algae eater. Now the roles became reversed. Yesterday, the algae eater completely exhausted the catfish, chasing it, ramming into its sides, nipping at his head, etc. Like I said, this activity is very new. As a result, catfish started breathing heavily (at times making a "coughing" motion), and keeps tilting to the side. His whisker on one side could be damaged and is floating upward, which could further exacerbate the tilting motion, but I'm not sure. We've separated the catfish to give him some space to recuperate, he has a space of about 5 in x 12 in. He seemed to get better in midday yesterday (less tilting, calmer) but today he doesn't look so good. Not only is he tilting, he's now floating upwards (which mostly doesn't seem to be his choice) but then he comes down to the bottom. Most of the time he's near the bottom on one side.
The damage I see on him is the following: 1. pink mouth, potentially injured from bumping into things. 2. bended whisker floating upwards. 3. potential scale damage on one side, but I don't know this little guy long enough to judge. He does not have white spots or anything like that. Otherwise looks completely normal. We added stress coat yesterday to promote healing and help with stress.
We've done a 7 gallon water change (20-25%) today, ammonia is at 0, for some reason PH is 6.6 instead of the usual 6.8-7, and the temperature went down from 84 to 80 somehow since he last measured it 3 days ago. My dad isn't quite as pedantic as myself about measuring everything in the tank every day, so I'm not sure whether these parameters just dropped all of a sudden or if they've been dropping slowly for weeks.
We know that PH and temp could have something to do with the illness, but since little fish are so sensitive to change, we're unsure of what to do here. If we turn up the temp, it could rise too much or we could be unable to keep it fixed, which could further stress the fish. The other fish seem absolutely fine (the large and the tiny). Should we alter anything? How else could we possibly help? We're losing hope since he's been floating upwards, fish don't really survive that as far as we know, but I'm devastated that we're losing one of our babies here due to an attack, even though for a year they coexisted peacefully. Any help is greatly appreciated.
My family has a 36 gallon tank with 3 fish: a 5 inch cichlid, a 2 inch pictus catfish, and a 1.5 inch algae eater (unsure what kind). The smaller fish have been in the tank for at least a year, and the cichlid has been here for 6 to 7 years (and probably more, we inherited the tank from the previous owners of the house). The cichlid is pretty peaceful, but curious, so she will chase others once in a while, but in a very friendly fashion.
Two days ago we've started noticing some weird chasing activity between the catfish and algae eater. Dad says that usually the catfish would chase the algae eater. Now the roles became reversed. Yesterday, the algae eater completely exhausted the catfish, chasing it, ramming into its sides, nipping at his head, etc. Like I said, this activity is very new. As a result, catfish started breathing heavily (at times making a "coughing" motion), and keeps tilting to the side. His whisker on one side could be damaged and is floating upward, which could further exacerbate the tilting motion, but I'm not sure. We've separated the catfish to give him some space to recuperate, he has a space of about 5 in x 12 in. He seemed to get better in midday yesterday (less tilting, calmer) but today he doesn't look so good. Not only is he tilting, he's now floating upwards (which mostly doesn't seem to be his choice) but then he comes down to the bottom. Most of the time he's near the bottom on one side.
The damage I see on him is the following: 1. pink mouth, potentially injured from bumping into things. 2. bended whisker floating upwards. 3. potential scale damage on one side, but I don't know this little guy long enough to judge. He does not have white spots or anything like that. Otherwise looks completely normal. We added stress coat yesterday to promote healing and help with stress.
We've done a 7 gallon water change (20-25%) today, ammonia is at 0, for some reason PH is 6.6 instead of the usual 6.8-7, and the temperature went down from 84 to 80 somehow since he last measured it 3 days ago. My dad isn't quite as pedantic as myself about measuring everything in the tank every day, so I'm not sure whether these parameters just dropped all of a sudden or if they've been dropping slowly for weeks.
We know that PH and temp could have something to do with the illness, but since little fish are so sensitive to change, we're unsure of what to do here. If we turn up the temp, it could rise too much or we could be unable to keep it fixed, which could further stress the fish. The other fish seem absolutely fine (the large and the tiny). Should we alter anything? How else could we possibly help? We're losing hope since he's been floating upwards, fish don't really survive that as far as we know, but I'm devastated that we're losing one of our babies here due to an attack, even though for a year they coexisted peacefully. Any help is greatly appreciated.
