Pictus Catfish Looks Ill

[sparrow6190]

I have a pictus catfish that seems ill.

His colors are darker, all his fins are closed, his whiskers look limp, and he swims non stop in circles wobbling around looking a little unstable, this is the first day I really noticed anything about him.

 

[WILDER]

Need more info in size of tank in gallons or litres, plus full stock list of fish, plus stats in ammonia,nitrite,nitrate,and ph.
When you say he swim round in circles it it fast as though he's chasing his tail.

 

[sparrow6190]

now he is laying on the bottom of the tank
his whiskers look like they are rotting, one is off color, they are much shorter as well.

i have a ropefish (i believe brought these illnesses), small pacu, electric yellow cichlid, and juv. frontosa, and a pink kissing gourami (a little sick too) in a 100 gallon with lots of caves.

i was getting rid of the goldfish by feeding them to my oscar one a day, and now that tank has ich too... i have been treating for ich and using Melafix.

I am going to go to the petstore today, what would be best to buy.

The tank is cycling, I did a 20% water change yesterday, I added cycled tank media (2 really used filters and some gravel)

 

[heather]

have you tried just using some methadine blue as that does great for most things also illnesses .. when my fish had ich i used all the ich medicines they never worked then i tried the methadine blue and it cleared it so quick ,,

 

[sparrow6190]

no i haven't, never heard of it untill now

 

[Bloo]

How long have you had the Pictus ?

How long has your tank been esablished ?

What are your ammonia & nitrite readings ?

 

[sparrow6190]

i have had the pictus since about christmas, he was residing in another tank.

I can't tank my ammonia reading right now, im out of dry tabs.

I'll do a water change later today

I dosed the tank with Pimafix a few minutes ago.

 

[sparrow6190]

The nitrite readings were very high, deadly high, no nitrates


doing a 40% water change

there was this gross buildup on the glass in the tank, i used the glass cleaner on it (magnet razor)

 

[Bloo]

I thought it might have something to do with nitrite or ammonia poisoning

Do you have any idea how that happened on such a mature stable tank ?

Usually only a decaying carcass or filter failure will cause something like that - though no nitrates are rather odd for such larger fish and waster producers.

Yep - water changes little and often to try and get things back on track again.

 

[sparrow6190]

I got some aquarium salt and used that on the tank and did another 50% today because the readings were so high

it sucks to be poisoning your fish, but hopefully it won't be much longer untill it is stable.

 

[Bloo]

You cannot use salt with Pictus catfish ! You don't need to add salt at all to freshwater tanks.
Salt will do absolutely nothing to bring your nitrites down What other readings are so high ?

For further info, see this thread.

 

[sparrow6190]

one tank has ich, but I moved the catfish to a very healthy 20 gallon tank, it has 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites, and a 7 ph, hopefully he will get better soon in there. Hopefully the tank will cycle soon, i've never had a south african get sick and me have to treat it, anything wrong magically seemed to disapear in a few days with a water change or moving to a less stressful tank.
kissing gourami's on the other hand...i've had 2 die (they die so fast when they get sick )