Upsidedown Catfish Tank Mates?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I don't think you've cracked a dozen yet :) Questions are welcome.

If he is only 1", it can be a bit more tender than the bulletproof subadult / adult synos but still should present no problem with a phototank. Not to waste the effort, please make sure the pics are clear and there is not too much distortion by the "phototank" curvature.
 
Yeah I've gotten what seems like thousands of pics of him but none of them are clear enough to really see him properly so I haven't bothered to post them. Some if them show his shape, some show his colours but none of them are good enough to make him out fully..
 
He's not eating!!! All 5 of the thera+a pellets I gave him this morning had to be taken out where he didn't touch them. Same with his bloodworms this arvo!!! He ate his pellets last night, so I don't know what's happened. His colours are also really dull today and he's hiding under the power head, not in his log.. Water parameters are fine AM: 0, NI: 0. NA:10 pH: 6.8. I was planning on moving him in with my betta tomorrow but I don't want to if he's not eating. What do I do??
 
At the face value of the info given, it sounds like he is stressed because of the duller / paler colors. If it was just absence of appetite, it could be no biggie. I force all my fish to fast a day a week and a 2-3 day stretch once a month. We tend to overfeed our fish and they get behind on digestion and this can cause issues, from minor to dire.

Is his tummy round? Could he have stolen the feed from others or is anyone missing?

Any recent changes in furniture, lighting, tank mates, filtering, aerating, anything at all?

What test kit do you use to measure water parameters?

Can he be bullied, displaced from the log by another fish?

What's the water temp and are the temp, pH, and hardness stable?

Get familiar with this, if you will http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/fish-health-diagnostics-read-before-posting.210102/ and you can browse through other stickies in this forum http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/forums/freshwater-diseases-and-health-issues.35/
 
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I fast my goldfish for a 24 hour period once a week, I find it helps the fancies digestion. His colours are more what's worrying me, in combination with not eating..

As for your questions,
#1 No, his tummys not round, and he's in a quarantine tank by himself atm. I was guna move him today but I think I'll hold off on that for now.

#2 No the tank hasn't changed at all. Its a very basic setup using a two sponge filters, a 100 watt heater, and a 300ltr/hr power head. No substrate, just a black perspex sheet on the bottom to reduce the glare and help lower stress. One small fake log and 2 med fake plants. The quarantine area is in our spare room which doesn't change at all.

#3 API master kit. I test the quarantine tanks every second day if they have inhabitants. His parameters are all fine, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10-20 nitrate pH 6.8 I'm currently saving for GH and KH kits.

#4 As #1 states, he's in a tank alone.

#5 The temp has stayed at a solid 24°c as far as I know, same with the pH. And as stated in #3 I don't know the hardness of the water yet.

Also thank you for the links. :)
 
Sounds like you are a knowledgeable hobbyist.

I see no obvious red flags yet. The nitrates are a bit high, esp. for such a light load of one 1" fish. I'd keep them under 10 ppm, better yet under 5 ppm - nitrates in all major rivers are undetectable by tests such as our crude home tests. In standing waters subject to agricultural run offs, nitrates from fertilizer can be quite high.

Nitrates have been implicated in digestion issues in a goldfish study but they have been much higher, ~10x, in that study, and the digestion problems were serious. One must note that measuring nitrates is quite tricky, as in not reliable, esp. the results cannot be trusted on absolute scale and should be taken with a grain of salt even on relative scale.

Hence, AFAIU, our pets may have nitrate-driven digestion issues while the nitrate test shows normal or not-too-alarming readings.

What's your wc routine? I'd make several large ones to bring the nitrates to 5 ppm or below and try to keep them there, that is, unless your tap / source water already has 10-20 ppm.

How long has the fish been in the qt tank? In your possession? Where I leading with this is that this is a qt tank and hence it may have a diverse culture of pathogens, bacterial, viral, or parasitic, how ever latent or active. What's the history of that qt tank prior to the last occupant arriving - was anybody ill in there, died?

Has it fed with gusto before supposedly falling ill or was it acting hesitant, not hungry, etc.?

If you are on municipal water, I hope you don't forget to add dechlorinator. We all can forget.

Hardness is no biggie for highly adaptable synos, goldfish but it needs to be stable. Large swings in hardness, pH, temp., etc. stress fish and can shock them. Swings in hardness and pH occur usually in tanks fed with RO water and having poor buffering ability.
 
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#1 I do 40% pwc twice a week on the quarantine tank, the nitrate comes out of my tap somewhere between 5-10ppm. I check to make sure that the temp in the bucket is the same as the tank before adding it to the tank, I add prime and aquasonic tropical conditioning salts to the fresh water, that's about it.

#2 he's been in the tank (and my possession) for about a week and a half now. The last occupants were three albino widdow tetra males where my dominant one absolutely shredded them.. I have multiple quarantine tanks, and multiple observation tanks, the size of the fish determines the tank I put it in. In between residents I empty and clean the quarantine/observation tanks (along with the décor) in a vinagar/bleach solution (1 part bleach, 9 parts vinegar) then soak everything in a bucket/bath of water that I've overdosed with prime, final rinse and set up to cycle again. I messed up once before and didn't clean out my hospital tank properly, had an ich breakout in one of my display tanks and vowed to over sanitise every hospital tank between residents after that.

#3 The first few days he was eating like a pig, just about anything I put in for him was gone in seconds. Its really odd, he ate one nls pellet this morning (first thing he's eaten in a few days) but it was only the one pellet, I had to take the other 3 out where he didn't touch them.

I am on municipal water, and always add prime, if I can't remember adding it to the bucket, I add it again to be sure.


Will preform an 80% pwc in a sec to help bring his nitrates down as far as I can, the reason I use prime is because of all the crap that comes out of my tap, as its supposed to detoxify everything. And I'm still working on getting a good pic of him. :)
 
1.5 weeks is too early to say much. He may be still adjusting.

IDK what those salts are, I don't add any salts.

That's an appreciable amount of nitrate in your tap, like from a swamp water with lots of rotting vegetation :) Or lots of fertilizer run off. It's no biggie but one solution is a refugium / have plants uptake the nitrate, e.g., pothos vine does a great job and looks great too.

You clean your qt tanks very thoroughly, almost, one might say maniacally :) That's very highly commendable. Few work so much for their wet pets. I am an example of laziness when referenced to your dedication.

But one thing caught my eye: ich outbreak. Fish have ich naturally. It cannot be eradicated, just like strep cannot be eradicated from our throat. Ich is kept from an outbreak by fish's natural defenses - their immune system (same goes for the strep in throat). I may be wrong but my impression is that 99 times out of 100 an ich outbreak is preceded by a compromise in fish's immune system.

I used to treat for ich but then I learned from some LFS owners that they do not, they just make sure the water is pristine and the environment is stress-free and the ich goes away by itself. I have seen it now in my tanks too. And that is why healthy tank mates do not pick up ich from the ill ones.

But I think this is about a mild outbreak. IDK if this would work in a severe case or if medicating would be a better route.

Long story to say that the ich outbreak you saw might have had nothing to do with your qt tanks and how you clean them.
 
I've looked into ways to lower my nitrate (other than having extremely planted tanks, as I can't seem to grow anything but anubius) and none are feasible, as most involve having plants that grow above the tanks surface and I have a cat who eats everything - and I mean everything. Bin bags, toilet rolls, the lot. He made himself very sick a year or so ago by eating some kind of ivy plant.. That was a horrible experience.

I've read up on things like Nitra-zorb and similar products but always get a bad feeling when I go to purchase one, so I trust my gut and leave it there. The nitrate in the tap seems to be seasonalish, during summer and autumn there's almost none in the tap supply at all, but come winter/spring it goes up to ridiculous amounts (if you keep fish that is).


On the plus side Felix has eaten today, he had two nls pellets and a few bloodworms for breakfast, and I just went in to see if he'd eaten his half of half a pea.. Turns out he really likes peas :D its not in there anywhere but he looks rather full and happy. Also he's back in his log today. :)
 
You could look up refugiums or algae filters - these are in a separate container, inaccessible to your feline. They need light to operate.
 
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