Banjo Catfish Loosing Its Tail

[m1lky12]

Right, have had a Banjo Catfish for about 3 months or so and was in pretty good shape until couple of weeks ago when I noticed the end of it's tail had been damaged. I've kept an eye on it since and it's got progressively worse and has probably lost about .5-1 cm off it's length. There's no real aggression towards it when it's out of hiding, the odd nip but nothing more and can still move around fine as it uses the water pumped through it's gills to travel. My stock is 3 Zebra Loaches, 6 Ruby Barbs and two Syodontis cats (which I'm in the process of rehoming) in a 80 liter tank which I'm looking to upgrade to my 175 liter once it's up and running.

So I'm just wondering if there could be another reason for this? And what's the best course of action now, both to treat it and avoid it later on down the line?

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Does the current tank have a deep sand base for the Banjo to naturally dig/hide in?
What species are the Synodontis?

I suspect that very cramped tank for your current stocking is brainging out territorial aggression, probably from the synos (although some are very peaceful like my S. congica and S. nigriventris), but it could also be from the Zebra Loaches who like all biotine loaches do far better in big social groups and can be a bit aggessive in small numbers when housed with slow moving fish. The sooner you can get the 175l running the better, hopefully it is a 4-foot long tank to give the loaches some space to use their energy (and the synos while you still have them).

I would isolate the Banjo and give it daily 10-20% water changes to help the tail fin regrow, but do check on whether the fin damage is from nipping or fin rot (the latter will show a white/grey outer edge and needs medication).

 

[m1lky12]

Thanks for the reply, the tank does have a deep sand base as well as some broad leafed horizontal plants for the Banjo to hide in (I've read that younger individuals prefer to hide amongst plants rather than burying, but it has both options). Ones a featherfin and the other I haven't been able to identify, I did open a thread on here going back a few months but unfortunately I still couldn't get a positive ID other than it was a Syno.

Although the tank is too small for the Synos they generally stay out of each others way and have their own places to hide out during the day so there's not really any aggression there and I've not seen either of them touch the Banjo even when it's in their way during feeding. I was planning on upping the numbers of loaches when I originally had 4 (one died from skinny loach disease recently) but was told I was already overstocked so didn't want to add anymore until I had sorted it out.

The new tanks a corner design so is based more on height than length but from side to side is about a meter so there some decent swimming space in there, trouble is my rents are a little skeptical as to whether the floorboards will take the extra weight no matter what facts or opinions I throw at them so I've got some more persuading to do until it's up.

From your description and the lack of aggression I've seen towards it I'd assume it's fin rot which is the problem, thing is my only other tank I have is taken up with a rainbow crab I was given recently after the LFS told my friend it could live in my fish tank happily. Can I not treat the whole tank?