I cam home and heard thrashing in my 240 and It was my jack Dempsey thrashing around violently and running into stuff. after his fit was don't he was breathing heavily and floating around the tank uncontrollably. then he settled at the top of the water breathing real heavily. Now he is kind of swimming around and the breathing is under control. This is the third time he has done this I believe. I have witnessed it once before and he took some nasty wonder to the head from the freak out and the eventually healed up after a week or two and he looked normal again, That happened a month ago or so. Then I cam home form school earlier this week and noticed he was looking beat up again. Had some scrapes all over his head and his tail fins were looking rough. Now i just cam home and witnessed another fit and now his head had some bad scars on it . He goes back to normal in a hour or so after the fit. He is in a 240 gallon with about 13 other small cichlids, any Ideas to whats going on? I can test the waters because I ran out of test strips. I did just order new ones though and they should be in buy the end of the week. I have a 300 watt heater on the tank but it is brand new and has never been turned on or plugged in because the tank has stayed around 75-78 degrees by itself. Oh also all the other cichilds look fine and have never done this. Also he has been eating fine and has his full appetite.
jack dempsy freaking out.
- Thread starter zebvance
- Start date
My first guess would be the water parameters being out of balance. Without test strips to confirm, I'd probably do some water changes daily til you can get some more to check it. An ammonia or nitrite spike could cause some odd behaviour like that. Some fish are more sensitive to the parameters being out of whack than others, so they might not all show symptoms at the same time or in the same way.
Other than that there are probably more possibilities than I'm qualified to guess at.
Maybe an infection or something driving him nuts. Others might have a better idea.
Other than that there are probably more possibilities than I'm qualified to guess at.
Maybe an infection or something driving him nuts. Others might have a better idea.^^ Agree, when they freak out like that it is either parasites or water paramaters. Also is anyone picking on him, that could be another reason. But I would guss it's either parasites or water parameters. Like Chris said, do some water changes, I would do them daily.
thanks guy Im heading out of town today and I wont be able yo do a water change till tomorrow since it takes about 5 hours to do on this tank. I woke up this morning had he is still hanging around the surface and being very still. I reached my hand into the tank to try to see him swim a round and he didnt move until i touched him. He was also very clumsy when he was swimming and ran into a couple of branches of the drift wood.