RIP Delhezi Bichir

[Rafini]

My awesome little Delhezi died today, he's always been a slow grower and hes been in grow out for a few months now and actually put on some decent size. I was looking forward to putting him in with my other larger bichirs.

So I fed some prawn to my snakehead and delhezi in growout (these two get along fine btw) I noticed last night that the bichir grabbed a large piece and shoved it into his mouth. I didn't think much of it because you would not believe the size food I've seen these guys swallow without incident. anyway I woke up this morning to find him suffocated with a big piece of prawn in his mouth. Now the piece wasn't even that big, but I guess he couldn't swallow it.

He still looked kinda alive though, he was right way up and his eyes weren't cloudy and he looked okay, so I removed the piece of prawn with tweezers and held him underneath the outlet in the tank allowing the water to circulate through his gills and attempt to revive him. I tried for around and hour with no positive results, so now unfortunately he is gone

here are a couple of pictures of him

here he is showing me he can eat big foods

 

[PDRed302]

Good looking Bichir, sorry for the loss.

 

[Leptoe]

sorry for your lost bro!

 

[Pbass265]

When I had a sunfish tank I had one that looked like a bass with the coloration of a bluegill named lil bits that would do this all the time. When feeding I would always have to check to make sure they all swallowed everything, and cut stuff up smaller. Thanks for the reminder because I am looking to get some Bircher soon. Sorry about your loss though, that was a nice looking fish.

 

[Llamalord]

Sorry for your loss man, I still remember losing my first poly I tried everything but she was gone. That feeling sucks, beautiful del sorry it ended like it did.

 

[poly74]

beautiful del. sorry for your loss.

 

[Rafini]

Thanks guys, I have two ornates and a senegal and I have kept bichirs before I just never even came across this problem before so it is a very strange first for me. I just hope my lesson can help people out there to realise that this could just happen to anyone. I think I was more attached to the del purely because he was in growout and got a lot more attention from me. He was the smallest and most weak of my 4 bichirs and all the others outgrew him greatly.