He's Alive and improving! Worries about his imminent demise were thankfully premature. Normally when a fish is laying on it's side , one assumes that in the next morning it'll be time to find a shovel. Firstly it was obvious that the fish was in distress, not being able to right itself due to a swim bladder issue. Otherwise healthy with good skin, eyes and color it seemed the fish wasn't sick, just disabled. Since the last post he languished for days on his side. With many attempts to set him upright by using the looped end of a net to grab a pectoral fin, (no way I'm gonna use my hand with those wicked spines) he would swim a short distance and flop over on the same side again. I tried stupid stuff like sticking a bubbling air line in his mouth which of course didn't work. All I could do was to add some Melafix to treat his reddened chin and lower lobe of his tail, which might ease part of his suffering, which worked for that. Secondly, I know just enough about fish anatomy and swim bladders to be dangerous! Basically most bony fishes have swim bladders, some don't such as scorpionfishes and gobies. Of those that do, some are 'closed systems' and some are 'open' or vented configurations such as catfishes. To attain neutral buoyancy, increasing or decreasing the volume of gasses inside the bladder, they can self regulate by two means, one by gulping air at the surface or releasing air when descending. The other way is with the transfer of gasses between the bloodstream and bladder to increase internal volume. In catfishes the swim bladder is connected to a vent in their throat. Enough biology, I'll now cut to the chase. Last Thursday after trying to right him with the same sad results, I notice the tank was about an inch or so low so filled the tank to the top. I then turned him on to his belly again and he stayed that way!! I thought to myself, wow, it's a Thanksgiving Day Miracle! Well not really, of course but he has been stable in his tank ever since. To improve the situation further I removed 2" of gravel from half of the tank to give him more depth. Apparently the amount of air in his bladder was just so critically low that just adding a couple of gallons of water made a huge difference! This morning I observed him, for the first time, to come up to the surface and gulp in air, clamping his jaws shut and returning to the bottom with excess air coming out his gills, an obvious attempt to inflate his swim bladder, never seen him do that! In the days since, I think he has begun eating again too although hard to tell as he only eats in the dark and uneaten pellets are hard to detect with a gravel substrate. I intend to remove more if not all remaining gravel which will help with the feeding question. Unsure about a long term prognosis but very encouraging for the time being. Thanks again to those responding to the original post!
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