Hey! I've been trying to find some answers online but decided I wanted to get peoples responses who have personal experiences with them too. I have a young ornate bichir in my tank with some other fish, and recently he's been acting a bit strange. I'm pretty new to fish keeping and have been learning from my dad who's super knowledgeable about them, but I want to get more than one person's advice on this.
My tank has a LOT of hiding areas/caves I made out of various rocks and plants, and my bichir always used to stay in this one cave, and come out to explore/eat sometimes. A couple weeks ago I got a young eclipse cat, and he kicked the bichir out of his cave and has spent most of his time in there now. There are numerous other places my bichir could go, but he seems to be staying in one small side/corner of the tank, and occasionally swimming up and down the glass. But usually he just sits there in that corner.
I've checked my water and all to make sure that's right, and I don't seem to have an issue there. Everyone else is happy, and the one time I shooed him away from the corner he went right into another cave I had made for him. Then he came back out and has been in the corner still.
Is he stressed? Sick maybe? None of the other fish seem to physically bother him (no chasing, biting, etc), but since I'm still pretty new the big change in behavior has me worried. The fish all have a good amount of room in the tank, but my dad recommended that if he's too stressed in there to maybe put him in his own. Does anyone have any advice on if this is an issue/how to deal with it if it is?
Some maybe important additional info: roughly two or three months ago a rope fish (pretty young so pretty small) I had in there managed to sneak out of the tank somehow and died before I found him. At that time there was only the bichir, rope fish, zebra danios, synodontis cat, bala shark, and rainbow shark. They all seemed to get along okay, and the rope + bichir would sit in the cave on top of each other a lot too.
Here's what's in my tank right now (while they all have space I'm planning on transferring them to a larger tank when they start getting bigger):
50 gallon (could be 40 gal, can't quite remember but 90% sure it's 50), includes:
- young ornate bichir (~6")
- rainbow shark, albino rainbow shark, bala shark, all ~1.5" long
- eclipse cat ~2"
- 1.5" dwarf synodontis cat
- 1.5" bumblebee cat
- 6 zebra danios as dither fish
- 3 young black kuli loaches
- some small snails and shrimp to help clean
My tank has a LOT of hiding areas/caves I made out of various rocks and plants, and my bichir always used to stay in this one cave, and come out to explore/eat sometimes. A couple weeks ago I got a young eclipse cat, and he kicked the bichir out of his cave and has spent most of his time in there now. There are numerous other places my bichir could go, but he seems to be staying in one small side/corner of the tank, and occasionally swimming up and down the glass. But usually he just sits there in that corner.
I've checked my water and all to make sure that's right, and I don't seem to have an issue there. Everyone else is happy, and the one time I shooed him away from the corner he went right into another cave I had made for him. Then he came back out and has been in the corner still.
Is he stressed? Sick maybe? None of the other fish seem to physically bother him (no chasing, biting, etc), but since I'm still pretty new the big change in behavior has me worried. The fish all have a good amount of room in the tank, but my dad recommended that if he's too stressed in there to maybe put him in his own. Does anyone have any advice on if this is an issue/how to deal with it if it is?
Some maybe important additional info: roughly two or three months ago a rope fish (pretty young so pretty small) I had in there managed to sneak out of the tank somehow and died before I found him. At that time there was only the bichir, rope fish, zebra danios, synodontis cat, bala shark, and rainbow shark. They all seemed to get along okay, and the rope + bichir would sit in the cave on top of each other a lot too.
Here's what's in my tank right now (while they all have space I'm planning on transferring them to a larger tank when they start getting bigger):
50 gallon (could be 40 gal, can't quite remember but 90% sure it's 50), includes:
- young ornate bichir (~6")
- rainbow shark, albino rainbow shark, bala shark, all ~1.5" long
- eclipse cat ~2"
- 1.5" dwarf synodontis cat
- 1.5" bumblebee cat
- 6 zebra danios as dither fish
- 3 young black kuli loaches
- some small snails and shrimp to help clean
