This past afternoon my firewood catfish was swimming around doing barrel rolls. He would occasionally stop and when he landed on the sand he would sometimes end up on his side or back. He didn't seem to be favoring being upside down or on one side, he was just swimming in a spiraling fashion. After I started my WC he appeared to be acting more his usual self, patroling the bottom swimming normally and resting upright but he would occasionally resume rolling while he swam. I increased surface agitation by raising my pump output out of the water and did a 25% WC. I checked on him before I left for work and he was sitting on the bottom and appeared to be acting normally, though I didn't see him swim. His gills were still moving at least.
Water temp is 79-80F. PH is about 7.5. No ammonia or nitrites. Nitrates are bright orange on my API kit, I can't tell colors well enough to judge the reading better than that. Higher than I'd like but I've been having trouble getting it down.
Tank is holding approximately 400 gallons, 8x4 footprint 24" high but it's only filled to about 20, and sump is about another 40 gallons. Filtration is 15 gallons of media (gravel/small rock) with double layers of the blue floss for mech in a 45G plastic stock tank. Pumping about 2500GPH.
Tankmates are a tiger shovelnose, a RTCxTSN hybrid, and a niger cat. Firewood cat is approximately 12" and is the longest fish in the tank. Aggression hasn't been an issue so far. No visible injuries on him or others, not even ragged fins. He had a broken off whisker, and gill curl when I got him in April but he's pretty much grown out of the gill curl and his whisker is nearly full length again.
I have a drip system running about 4GPH and perform a manual WC of about 25% at least once per week.
I've never had to treat my cats for anything but ICH, which was in April in a previous tank. Treated with high temps, 86-88F and daily WCs/gravel vacs for a few weeks. Tried salt at a low dose but the cats seemed to respond poorly to it so stopped that after a couple days. ICH hasn't showed up at all since treatment.
I feed mostly whole frozen/thawed fish, fillets of various fish, and whole shrimp. The Niger gets pellets but the other cats haven't taken to them. Last feeding was Tuesday and the firewood catfish only ate one fish. Usually he's a pig but occasionally not, so that didn't worry me. Shortly after feeding I used a flashlight to look at the roots of my plants and accidentally lit up the firewood cat with the reflection off the tank lid and he regurgitated the fish. I figured I had stressed him by shining the light on him but now I'm not so sure.
Any ideas what's wrong? Assuming he makes it through the night, when I get home in the morning I'll do another WC. What else should I do?
Water temp is 79-80F. PH is about 7.5. No ammonia or nitrites. Nitrates are bright orange on my API kit, I can't tell colors well enough to judge the reading better than that. Higher than I'd like but I've been having trouble getting it down.
Tank is holding approximately 400 gallons, 8x4 footprint 24" high but it's only filled to about 20, and sump is about another 40 gallons. Filtration is 15 gallons of media (gravel/small rock) with double layers of the blue floss for mech in a 45G plastic stock tank. Pumping about 2500GPH.
Tankmates are a tiger shovelnose, a RTCxTSN hybrid, and a niger cat. Firewood cat is approximately 12" and is the longest fish in the tank. Aggression hasn't been an issue so far. No visible injuries on him or others, not even ragged fins. He had a broken off whisker, and gill curl when I got him in April but he's pretty much grown out of the gill curl and his whisker is nearly full length again.
I have a drip system running about 4GPH and perform a manual WC of about 25% at least once per week.
I've never had to treat my cats for anything but ICH, which was in April in a previous tank. Treated with high temps, 86-88F and daily WCs/gravel vacs for a few weeks. Tried salt at a low dose but the cats seemed to respond poorly to it so stopped that after a couple days. ICH hasn't showed up at all since treatment.
I feed mostly whole frozen/thawed fish, fillets of various fish, and whole shrimp. The Niger gets pellets but the other cats haven't taken to them. Last feeding was Tuesday and the firewood catfish only ate one fish. Usually he's a pig but occasionally not, so that didn't worry me. Shortly after feeding I used a flashlight to look at the roots of my plants and accidentally lit up the firewood cat with the reflection off the tank lid and he regurgitated the fish. I figured I had stressed him by shining the light on him but now I'm not so sure.
Any ideas what's wrong? Assuming he makes it through the night, when I get home in the morning I'll do another WC. What else should I do?
