What happen to my B. Fila?

[monkeybike]

Well, that way of keeping fish is flirting with disaster and the disaster will not make you wait too long.

The barbel damage sounds very likely to be from the barbels getting sucked into the powerhead impeller chamber. But this damage is relatively not risky compared to what the slime can mean.

Quickly and just from the little you told us, there are several possible reasons:

1. Your water is not cycled, that is, there is ammonia and/or nitrite in it.
2. You have been introducing pathogens with your feeder fish, which appear to come in sick and already at the death's door.
3. Your water is not stable, especially the temperature swings, pH may be too, depending on the KH - carbonate water hardness, which likely you don't know either.
4. The water changes you practice can either be too stressful or again introduce giant swings in temp, pH, water composition. Also perhaps you don't condition your tap water or don't condition enough.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I'm still new to this hobby. There's a few things I still need to learn. If I can improves my husbandry, trust me I will. Besides, always thought catfish are hardy kind of fish. Never had a problem with rtc,tsn,wallago,etc before.

Use the conditioner yesterday, today he's much better. Lighter color, no skittish. But he do look skinny, have to wait till night for him to eat. Won't take food day time.

You can make a lot of headway by at least doing two things - buying and using an API liquid test kit to analyze your water, e.g., like this one https://www.chewy.com/api-freshwate...ePPOVRqfSm28zSTkUW8aAssrEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds and by NOT feeding live feeders, instead offering, e.g., frozen fish, which IMHO would be the best as this catfish is a piscivore.

It's not sensible to generalize and treat all catfish species the same. There are 3500 scientifically described species of catfish and about as many undescribed yet, scientists believe. Just because you've kept half a dozen of catfish species, which is ~0.1% does not mean you know anything about the next catfish species you are about to acquire.

I've kept couple hundred different species and I consider I know next to nothing about catfish in general. The field is too vast. If you keep few species and study them well, you become a niche specialist with deep but narrow knowledge. If you keep a lot of species, there isn't time to study them well and your knowledge is superficial.

...

For fairness sake one could mention that if you kept such demanding (in terms of size and related requirements) catfish before and had no problems, you could either be just lucky or have a rare inborn knack for fish keeping doing things intuitively right, or close to it... or both.

 

[amazonfishman]

I never tested the water parameters except for chlorine since, I would assume, that new tap water are free from nitrate, ammonia and stuff. Before this, done 100% water changes once a week cause the tank outside my house with direct sunlight. Never had a problem before with water changes. But after I brought the tank in my house, 3rd day the problem comes but no more green water.

No tank mates, except for his live food, baby carp. But the weird thing is, the carp died after 1 hour I put em in the tank. Looks like they covered with white stuff all over their fins and eyes going blind. But amazingly, the Fila doesn't. Could it be from the Fila's mucus?

Yes, he's been eating but not that well since in the carp can't survive in the tank, only able to eat 1 or 2 fish within the 1 hour operiod before all it's food died. He won't take other than live feeders.

Aeration? Yes, there's power heads (I use as current) and canister filter. My Fila always skittish, even before this, with or without light. As the power heads, I think the barbel damage are from the propeller inside the power filter. It's barbel must've been gotten inside the filter.

Viktor hit the nail on the head but I'll chime in as well.

I would stop the 100% water changes immediately. Even in the most dire of times I would never change that % of water because you will almost certainly have to "cycle" the water again and for a more sensitive species like Brachy's that won't end well. RTC/TSN are a lot more durable by comparison FWIW. I have always stuck by the 50% rule in normal scenarios and never done more than a 70% change in an emergency. I would switch to Seachem Prime or a higher quality water conditioner as well. Your PH and Hardness likely aren't swinging much if you're using the same water source and consistent PH is more important in most cases then accurate PH unless it's unreasonably hard water like 8 or something when that fish comes from PH closer to 6.5 in the wild.

What temp are you keeping the tank at normally? I bet if you look at that and compare that to right after you did a water change you'll notice a huge swing in the temp which is very hard on the fish whether much hotter or much colder, the more damaging being colder especially if it drops below 70 or so for prolonged periods until the heater can catch up. I've had a heater fail and had brachy species survive 66ish for brief periods (less than 24 hours) of time but they were super stressed looking. I'd aim for 74-84 degrees.

While possible that the barbels/trailers got caught in the powerhead I would say it's just as likely they got "burned" by ammonia/nitrate/nitrites in the water from not being cycled properly. I've seen this happen in various shovelnose species with poor water quality. Goldfish feeders will produce a lot of ammonia and decaying fish if any sit in the tank before being removed will as well.

It won't kill the catfish to not eat for a few days and you would be far better off forcing it to switch diet off of live food or if you insist on live food to setup a small quarantine tank for your feeders to sit for a week or two before feeding them to the fish. I personally would switch to hikari sinking carnivore/massivore pellets, live nightcrawlers, or market shrimp/prawns/tilapia all of which are far safer for the fish with almost zero risk of disease being introduced. Can't really tell how big it is in the pic but I generally kept feeding my shovelnose to once/twice a week max if they were 12" or larger.

Depending on the strength of the powerhead and tank decor, make sure there is somewhere out of the current for the fish to chill as well. Lots of brachy's like current but they need to be able to rest also and not be forced into it 100% of the time. My Piraiba liked a little current but didn't just hangout in it like my Goslinea or Juruense would.