Senegal Bichir

[Tkeck]

Hey guys, I'm kind of new to the fish world. I had two small (1.5-2 inches) Senegal bichirs in my 55 gallon tank and they were really happy and eating, until all of a sudden my free fish tank filter with no guard sucked one of them up and killed it. Ever since then my other bichir wont even eat or come out. I was wondering, was he sad? and should i get another one so he will actually eat? please someone help!

 

[simonas]

hi and welcome to the forum

I;d doubt that the other one is sad however it could be that there are issues wth your water causing the dead one to die and often dead fish are sucked up by inlets etc. This may explain why the other has stopped eating

also its often the case in my experience that you don;t always see bichirs feed when you first get them as they;re pretty secretive until well extablished

 

[waterdrop]

Was your free fish tank filter already mature and "cycled" when you got it or did you cycle it by one of our methods?

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Welcome to TFF!

 

[Tkeck]

Hey guys thanks for responding back!! well see i thought about that same thing (water conditions) but I had an already cycled filter on there with the free filter, and my two oscars are doing great, and before this fish died the bichirs were really happy and ate freely and i could actually watch them eat. Any time the food hit the water they came swimming out and would eat what they could., idk...im going to have my LFS test the water for me to see if im doin somethin wrong.

 

[waterdrop]

If you get LFS tests, be sure to try and see the reagent color matchings against the test cards along with the employee and try to write down numerical results rather than accepting a word like "fine." Unfortunately, seeing clear water or fish eating is not a very detailed diagnostic on water quality.

~~waterdrop~~