I'm very concerned about my albino polypterus palmas, I've had her for 3 or 4 years now and until today she has never shown this behaviour before. She is consistently charging round the tank swimming up an down in erratic patterns one time she was half in and half out of the water. Another one of my bichirs was exhibiting this same behaviour but has since stopped after I fed them. She has been doing this almost all day she only stopped once for about half an hour to an hour I have no idea what this could be other than stress but I don't know what's causing her to stress out for so long. I'm going to do a partial water change on the tank. Please help!
Help my albino bichir won't stop frantically swimming
- Thread starter Thomas cw
- Start date
Maybe a possibly injury. Kind act like this when bumping into glass sometimes. Would reduce lights and stress.
Lights have been turned off for a while. Just did a 20% water change (didn't want to stress the fish out too much) and added a small does of medicine. She appears to have stopped for now, touch wood, I did notice that part of her caudal tail (middle bit) was opaque so I looked through some old pictures of her and it isn't present it wasn't red it was a similar colour to her skin doesn't seem to be impairing her but that's why I decided to dose the tank just in case it's fungal. Although I doubt it's a fungus I have a UV steriliser on my filter, of course it's not guaranteed safety but it's still quite effective. My original approach was to feed them and that seemed to stop it for a while probably because it distracted her from whatever was spooking her.
I have noticed that my true flying fox is increasingly becoming more aggressive towards all the fish except the catfish and plecos its possible that the flying fox has spooked her but if it were that I wouldn't see why it would spook her for the whole day.
It's possible the Flying Fox is creating the stress. If you actually seen the Flying Fox harrass the Albino Polypterus I personally would remove the Flying Fox.
I have seen the flying fox harassing it but not for very long at all and when I did see it harassing her she seemed relatively unphased by it but I'll keep an eye on it for sure if it's aggression increases I'll see if it can be integrated into one of the other tanks in my house. I've also had the flying fox for a number of years now and to be fair it's always been a little aggressive especially ever since my rainbow shark died but it never chases the bichirs beyond his little area of the tank which the bichirs have happily lived in with it for years now. But the bichir has been exhibiting this behaviour for a long time now and it just happens randomly with no stimulus next minute she'll be calm next darting round the tank no signs of injuries or the flying fox but I'll definitely keep an eye on the flying fox.
If anyone is interested the stock for my tank is; a pimpictus cat, a hoplo cat, a synodontus sp cat, a striped Dora cat, a bulldog pleco, a common pleco or a species similar to it, a orange parrot fish cichlid, a true flying fox, 3 bichirs two senegals one palmas (the palmas is the fish this post is about), two common silver dollars (breeding pair), three Bala sharks (two of which are rescues) and an apollo shark also called apollo shark minnows which was 100% an impulse buy when I was a kid not knowing that to decrease aggression to other fish its best to have two or more apollo sharks.
I think this is caused by trauma, like mentioned above, either fish got bang in the glass or someone is bullying it. Sorry to say but most polys that get this dont make it, usually they end up with spinal issue or internal head injury.
I really hope it isn't trauma related. There's no external sign of damage. I really hope she stops this is really stressing me out. There's also no sign of any sort of spinal issue and she's eating just fine every time I put food in it stops the behaviour for a little while.
