Flowerhorn handstand?

[heyits3lla]

Hello! So I have an adorable little flowerhorn who keeps doing a handstand on his substrate. He acts perfectly fine other than when I feed him he turns white. Then he goes back to his normal color the next day or so. Does he just enjoy doing handstands?

 

[islandguy11]

Hello! So I have an adorable little flowerhorn who keeps doing a handstand on his substrate. He acts perfectly fine other than when I feed him he turns white. Then he goes back to his normal color the next day or so. Does he just enjoy doing handstands?

Well I don't know about the turning white part, never had that, but handstanding is quite natural with FH's (mine also does it a lot) -- if they're feeding off the bottom or moving rocks/substrate. Maybe because of their bigger heads they kind of have to go almost straight upside down more than most fish.

But if they're not feeding, playing with substrate or re-decorating and just doing handstands, then I might be concerned about health (swim bladder?) and/or water issues.

 

[heyits3lla]

Well I don't know about the turning white part, never had that, but handstanding is quite natural with FH's (mine also does it a lot) -- if they're feeding off the bottom or moving rocks/substrate. Maybe because of their bigger heads they kind of have to go almost straight upside down more than most fish.

But if they're not feeding, playing with substrate or re-decorating and just doing handstands, then I might be concerned about health (swim bladder?) and/or water issues.

He isn’t eating from the bottom or playing with the substrate. If it is swim bladder, how would I tell if it is and what should I do?

 

[islandguy11]

Ella sorry I'm hesitant to give anything but basic medical advice, simply because I've been lucky and have only had to deal with a few minor health issues over the years with my fish.

Hopefully someone else with more experience will come along and provide some better advice -- if not start a new thread in the Health & Disease sub-forum, providing as many details as you can so people can help best (incl. hopefully testing your water parameters with test kit). You can also use this site's search engine, I'm sure you will find lots of good advice to see if that's even the problem with your fish (again I'm not sure, in fact if he's just doing it sometimes and most of the time swimming normally, I really don't think it's a problem, he's probably just playing around).

Also if he had serious swim bladder disease he'd likely be swimming sideways or upside down -- monitor the situation to see if it gets worse while doing some research to compare typical symptoms of swim bladder disease before doing anything else is my suggestion.

If you could upload a video to YouTube or Vimeo then post it here or in Health thread that would help people advise further.