Red tail cat won’t stop swimming

[thebiggerthebetter]

I thinks he’s been doing better he’s now not swimming into things and he’s just chillin my the plant. Still breathing heaviler then anyone else

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Top down

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These shots say a lot to me. This fish is pretty messed up. The head and the cranial shield are mangled up, uneven, badly asymmetric. The eyes are sitting asymmetric. The snout is asymmetric. Left gill plate is missing a piece. The pectoral fins are messed up. The dorsal fin is not quite centered on the body. The backbone is curved in the side shot.

I don't expect this fish to be viable because there is no reason the mess is only visible on the outside and every reason to expect the internal organs to be messed up too. Heavy(ier) breathing may point to it too. Chances are it will perish sooner than later.

So all in all, there is some truth to your statement that only this RTC concerns you. But your tests do show problems with an incomplete nitrogen cycle. And this is crucially important to understand and address. Losing a plat RTC is nothing compared to this issue in your long term fish keeping hobby.

 

[MrDuckBootz]

That sucks, hopefully he will live. At least I got one rtc that’s behaving normally. I will continue trying to get my water situation fixed but I had a feeling something else was wrong with him considering he was the only one who acted out of the ordinary. The other plat is behaving normally eating (haven’t fed for a couple days tho cuz trying to cycle) and swimming. I’d feel bad to watch him stave to death since he doesn’t like to/can’t eat. Hopefully he will start to eat more.

 

[MrDuckBootz]

Is it possible to get false positives? Because i tested the water from my bathtub which is where i fill up grow out tank from and it read that it contained .25ppm which is also what the tank read out to be no matter what i do it doesn’t seem to go down. Ive cleaned the filter, cleaned the tank gravel, treated the water, and still cant seem to get a Change in the number for ammonia

 

[Fishman Dave]

Something to consider for the future.
If you have large tanks or ponds running, it is worth running a couple of extra small internal filters in one of them. pick up a couple of second hand ones which are less than the cost of a lightbulb to run. Then if you have an issue like a tank not cycled fully, you can either transfer some of the filter media into the filter in the uncycled tank, or you can move across one of the small internal filters fully.
The bottles of bacteria are good but nothing will beat a filter already running on one of your tanks with all the good bacteria in it. (As long as the ph of the tanks is close to the same).
This will help speed up the process of cycling your tank. It won't negate the need to, but it's always a safe fall back when you have live fish.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Is it possible to get false positives? Because i tested the water from my bathtub which is where i fill up grow out tank from and it read that it contained .25ppm which is also what the tank read out to be no matter what i do it doesn’t seem to go down. Ive cleaned the filter, cleaned the tank gravel, treated the water, and still cant seem to get a Change in the number for ammonia

Sure is. As I stated above, it is a good idea to use an ammonia-free water for reference when doing water tests, e.g. bottled water, aged water, filtered water, etc. Tap water is usually sanitized with chloramine, which can be a source of ammonia. Prime detoxifies both chloramine and the ammonia produced as a result of chloramine decomposition. But the ammonia is still readable as ammonium, the non toxic form. The test does not distinguish between ammonia and ammonium, it reads the sum of both.

 

[Fish Tank Travis]

Just an FYI, I never have seen a reading below .25 on my ammonia test, and my fish have been just fine for a few years now. I just consider the .25 mark zero.

As for your problem fish, it does appear to have significant deformities that will cause it to perish very early in life. Is there anyway you can contact the place you got it and ask about a return or exchange? It seems to me that it would have been obvious to them that the fish was significantly deformed before they sold it to you, and they should have never sold it to begin with.

One of the other members mentioned keeping extra filters/bio media on your other tanks and I would just like to second this. I have nearly 20 lbs of ceramic media for my 220, in the sump. I then added 1000 bio balls for just this purpose. They are unnecessary to run my 220, but they are collecting BB and can be used to cycle another tank, if needed.

Lastly, you need more filtration on that 75. It is heavily stocked and creates a lot of waste. The 406 is just not up to the challenge of reliably filtering it. I think it should have at least an FX6 on it. If you want a budget-friendly option, then you can add a SunSun 304B to your existing 406 and that should filter the tank quite well. Just make sure you clean them out at least once a month.

Ok, this is the real lastly, lol, but if you ever find yourself in this situation again, what worked for me was to do 50-75% water changes daily and add Prime with each one. This kept the water clean and the Prime locked any ammonia or nitrite that was produced. I had an issue with my 29 when I used it to quarantine my 8” fire eel. I had stirred up the substrate (sand) and then did a water change before adding the eel. Then, the tank crashed and the ammonia was crazy high (maybe 4 ppm high). I immediately moved the new fire eel into my 220 with the bigger ones, which was risky, and completely broke down the 29 to a bare bottom tank before putting the small fire eel back in it. I continued the water changes I mentioned above for about two weeks and everything was good from then on. I did use aged and preheated water too.

 

[MrDuckBootz]

Here are better top down videos of my cats the one in the middle is the fish in question his eyes look symethrical to me. Is that a chance that it caught a parasite or something?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

There is a non zero chance of anything happening but we are talking about the most likely things or what we think is the most likely. What I saw in the prior photos has nothing to do with any parasite or other pathogens.

These photos are far less clear than the prior top down photo. Also, in the early growth stages, I'd reckon the abnormalities may become more and more manifested. Perhaps that is why in these photos the fish looks more normal, as you noted.

 

[MrDuckBootz]

I think the other catfish or maybe the bichir is really stressing him out. My mom FaceTimed me frantically, since i was dorming in college and not where the tank is. Someone took a chunk out of the RTCs tail (the one that’s swimming weird and not eating) i got a tank divider and ordered the fastest shipping i could get which arrives Friday. Until then does anyone have any suggestions its so hard not being close to my fish especially situations like this. I was on the way back to the house till I realized i had 2 quizzes today so i cant even be there to try and assess how bad the damage is. I’m going back later today

 

[MrDuckBootz]

Here’s a pic my mom send me. I think it was the other rtc it’s so hard keeping fish with out being their all the time to observe there activity’s. If I had saw the other rtc ripping at him I would gotten a divider along time ago way before it got to the point that it’s at rn. This is just adding to his already high stress level I feel so bad I know I could have prevented it if I didn’t dorm away at college