Green Terror showing whirling behavior
- Thread starter Tphil32
- Start date
Won't be dogmatic, but from the video I have doubts that it's simply a quirky behavior. Kind of a quick video, but I think I see him twitch, like a response to an irritant. At least if it was me, I'd believe something was wrong and attempt to treat, like you're doing, and hope with his apparent alertness and energy it's early enough. Wish I could be more help than that.
My thoughts exactly. I would lean more towards behavioral if he just went into spinning but there are definite twitches before he does it. I have played with the lights over the last few days though and there's definitely some correlation with it. With the lights off his colors are normal and tonight I saw no signs of twitching or whirling over the course of a couple hours. Lights on and instant darkening of colors and the whirling began within a few minutes.
The twitching and the rapid mouth movement/spitting seems to indicate something is irritating it. It could be anything from flukes and external parasites to something in the water. Have you sprayed any pesticides recently or cleaned near the tank? Any painting in the house? Any new decorations or plants? Do you have a conductivity meter to check for stray current in the water?
Haven't done any painting or had anything on my hands recently that I would think would cause the irritation. I just tested for stray voltage and with the heater unplugged I get 0V, heater plugged in adds 0.3V to the water column. Would this be enough to cause the irritation?
Stray voltage from the lights? Or in combination with the heater?
Had that happen once, felt a tingle in the water and traced it to the tank light, which I replaced. Fish were ostensibly unaffected... but it might be worth trying a different light on the tank, if possible, to see whether it makes a difference.
There's a couple of small twitches at the beginning and very slight ones after each whirl. My Oscars sometimes "twitch" to each other, but I'm pretty sure its because love is in the air. I personally would be doing the same as you and treating it. At this stage I think its more of a benefit that just leaving him and seeing how it works out. You're doing the right thing in my book. Keep us up to date on how things are going, fingers crossed he recovers fine which I'm sure he will. Lets just hope that the bump on the head wasn't more serious internally, but only time will tell.
I've only seen this happen to an umbee that jumped out its tank. It would behave the same way, I had to move her to another tank as she was driving the others nuts. Regular water changes, I used tea tree for first two days to prevent any infections. After 3 weeks she was back to normal.
