I have an unfortunate situation with this fella. I had not seen this fish in weeks, despite taking every object out of the tank and all...so I thought he was dead a while ago and the other fish gradually picked him away or something. He must have been burrowed in the gravel because yesterday, much to my astonishment, I saw him. The poor guy is practically skin and bones...that said..
I'm not sure why the disappearance. It's a 75 gallon tank and the only thing I can think of is bullying by this one parrot fish (only remotely aggressive thing in the tank). But anyway, all of a sudden he's out and just sort of treading water against the glass. I put him in a bucket of the aquarium's water (which is free of ammonia and anything else I can think of) while I set up a partition in the tank. I've replaced the gravel in this section with aquarium sand (I've read they like soft substrate), the partition is keeping all other fish away. I've also blocked the light in his section so only indirect light reaches him, as to keep his stress low. There are a few hiding spots, which I haven't seen him utilize yet. Of course, I've placed food easily accessible to him.
He seems pretty uninterested in food, but I have seen him take just the smallest morsel a couple of times. He is clearly weak, surely from hiding and not getting food. Netting him to and from the bucket was easy (tried not to stress him out). What is slightly strange is his behavior is fairly monotonous. He keeps doing that "treading" water in a vertical position, usually near the glass. Occasionally, he'll swim around a little but goes back to that. His gills were going dangerously fast yesterday. Today, they have slowed slightly, but are still clearly faster than they should be for his activity...and this seems to be constant. I have set him up like I said above, and put some Melafix in in case there's any latent bacterial or other issue (I didn't feel it was smart to risk anything stronger in his condition).
Basically, my question is, is there anything more I can do for him? Seems like he has a chance, but he doesn't look awesome either.
I'm not sure why the disappearance. It's a 75 gallon tank and the only thing I can think of is bullying by this one parrot fish (only remotely aggressive thing in the tank). But anyway, all of a sudden he's out and just sort of treading water against the glass. I put him in a bucket of the aquarium's water (which is free of ammonia and anything else I can think of) while I set up a partition in the tank. I've replaced the gravel in this section with aquarium sand (I've read they like soft substrate), the partition is keeping all other fish away. I've also blocked the light in his section so only indirect light reaches him, as to keep his stress low. There are a few hiding spots, which I haven't seen him utilize yet. Of course, I've placed food easily accessible to him.
He seems pretty uninterested in food, but I have seen him take just the smallest morsel a couple of times. He is clearly weak, surely from hiding and not getting food. Netting him to and from the bucket was easy (tried not to stress him out). What is slightly strange is his behavior is fairly monotonous. He keeps doing that "treading" water in a vertical position, usually near the glass. Occasionally, he'll swim around a little but goes back to that. His gills were going dangerously fast yesterday. Today, they have slowed slightly, but are still clearly faster than they should be for his activity...and this seems to be constant. I have set him up like I said above, and put some Melafix in in case there's any latent bacterial or other issue (I didn't feel it was smart to risk anything stronger in his condition).
Basically, my question is, is there anything more I can do for him? Seems like he has a chance, but he doesn't look awesome either.
