Bichirs thrashing about a bit

[Ponera]

Haven't posted here in a while. Anyways I have a 45 Gallon and I recently got rid of a problematic synodontis and gave my cichlid to someone with a great big tank so it could be happy. I put in a smallish (~4.5 inches) senegal bichir to grow up more with my rather slow growing captive bred senegals that are still about 5.5 and 6 inches (or probably less, hard to measure hah)

I keep the water very clean and they all happily eat. I've noticed from time to time that they will thrash around like crazy about mid-top of the tank. It only lasts a few seconds and then they are back to normal. What is this behaviour? All three seem to get along great and just swim about and snuggle.

 

[Dr.B]

Describe the thrashing? Is it like they are just darting to the top and quickly going back down? Or is it more like they are swimming near the top and just out of no where start thrashing?

 

[Ponera]

A bit of both. Basically the worst one so far was he was doing kinda death rolls and erractic fast turns and just randomly thrashing violently for about 3 seconds, then went back to normal like nothing was wrong. Nothing seems to have triggered it and water is fine. No other fish were even near him.

 

[Dr.B]

Senegals are known to be very active. This is probably just part of their activity.

 

[Dr.B]

However if they do continue to thrash I would highly suggest reinforcing your tank covers just to make sure they aren't able to slip out anywhere, especially if they are thrashing. Just to be safe

 

[tlindsey]

I have raised several Senegal Bichir, and this is normal imo, they will do the thrashing if you spook them also.

 

[Ponera]

Yah I have seen them do that when spooked before, it's just odd cause this one was doing it after just chilling away from everyone out of nowhere so I thought maybe someone knew more about it. Thanks guys!

 

[Ponera]

The bichir that was doing the odd thrashing has lost its color and is more pale. He was laying about like a lump and would flare its gills before its head jerked. I thought maybe gill flukes. Of course this coincides with my heater once again magically unplugging itself. He is eating very vigorously and pushing others out of the way (he is the biggest one I have) so that is good. He is eating more than the others. I've dosed with Neoplex twice now after removing carbon from the filter. We'll see if that makes a dent if he doesn't improve or gets worse I'll dose with anti parasitic or somesuch.

What do you guys think? Laying about, gill flaring and head jerking are the symptoms along with loss of color.

 

[Dr.B]

Well loss of color can be directly tied to heater being unplugged. So can probably laying around and both gill flaring and head jerking. I would just let the tank warm back up to 75-80 and then keep close watch from there. If you could get a video that would help a lot.

 

[Ponera]

The heater has magically unplugged itself several times now and the bichirs have never had a problem. Really weird that it's the only thing in my apartment that gets unplugged and it has happened several times.

Yah I'm not terribly concerned about it because he is aggressively eating still. I kind of suspect he has some sort of low grade infection that was brought on by the heater going down, so a full course of neoplex should help out.

Sadly this bichir in particular doesn't like the camera. Every time I bring it out he bolts for cover. What a jerk. Hah.