Kyle

Hi all,

I recently purchased 3 Panda Corys, all of which are still fairly young. 2 of them are the same size, whilst one is about a cm smaller than the other two. The strange thing is that he/she does what i can only describe as barrel rolls

He/she spins a full revolution while foraging on the floor or swimming through the water on they way to perch on a leaf. I initially thought he/she might have a dorsal or pectoral fin malformation which would lead to instability whilst swimming, but closer inspection shows all fins to be ok? he/she does it in both directions, left and right, and ive only seen it happen about 8 times in the 4 days ive had the pandas for. has anyone ever heard of this kind of strange behaviour, or have any ideas on wether or not my cory could be sick? I cant find any info on a barrel roll inducing disease

fish_newbie

My guess is that he might have a bladder issue or something that he can't control himself correctly and get swept away by the current. But it is just a guess, I've never seen this be done by a cory before. He might just also be a normal and healthy cory as well, one who suppose to be born as a bird. Sorry i couldn't be of much help, other members will help you soon.

Kyle

thanks fish_newbie! I think you could be right about the bladder issue, in which case i'd expect it to either get worse as time goes on or to be a small malformation he could live with. Although I much prefer your 'born to fly' theory!

aquarist48

Good morning Kyle. Can you post your readings for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? It will really help others to help you more. I see that your tank was set up the end of July and I have to question if the tank is cycled.
Best of luck and I hope your fish is going to be ok.
Ken

aecw

I've had my Panda corys for a year or two now and I've also noticed some "unique" behavior from them also. I once even posted it under "Twitchy fish" almost like they were scratching their back like they had an itch and acouple times I saw the whole roll. They are currently all fine and healthy but my main recommendation is watch out for their barbels - mine wore theirs down so I switched to a mostly sandy floor for them. When I asked my trusted fish guy about it - he said that it could of also been due to a kind of bacteria that affects them - too late to save the barbels for us but otherwise they are healthy, vigorous and happy. I also feed them crisps which I tap to get them to sink to bottom - everyone now eats off the bottom in that tank including the tetras!

Kyle

@aecw: thanks for the info, will keep an eye out on their barbels, currently have a fine grained gravel which doesnt appear/feel sharp, but at the sign of wear ill make the switch to a sandy substrate. That honestly sounds almost exactly like whats going on with the little guy in my tank. havent seen him do it today though.

@Ken: out of 5 pet stores within half an hour from my home, only one stocks a master kit to test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates, and the cost of purchasing it is 3 X the entire cost of my tank with all the trimmings, 6 plants and all my fish (it works out to $90 roughly given our exchange rate, is this what costs are like for you in america for a test kit? as thats a lot of money here that i dont have at the moment).

cycling wise, the tank is 2 weeks old. i started it with half filter media from a friend with an established tank and half new, and about a kilogram of his gravel kept in a stocking for removal later. A quarter of the tanks water also came from him, and all top ups and water changes were half his water, half dechlorinated water up until this weekend (he has been very nice by letting me do this) I ran the tank at 28-30 Centigrade without fish for a week and a half, experiencing what looked like a bacterial bloom on day 3 of the setup which abated by day 7 (I also 'fed' the empty tank with fish flakes to propogate the cycle). I then bought 4 danios (but found 2 extra in the bag) and all were fine for 2 days so i bought another 4 danios (and found another extra) and the 3 pandas. Because I have no kit and because of the 8 fish i added quite quickly, Im performing and will continue to perform 25-40% water changes every other day until the tank is up for a month, weekly gravel vacuuming where i do about a quarter of the substrate and bi-monthly half filter changes, where i keep half the media in and add fresh to to the filter. It may not be the most accurate method, but its not financially possible to get a test kit for that price and thus im attempting to cover my bases by being very cautious in the tank maintenance. pH is a steady 7.4 and temperature is at 26 Centigrade, all thresholds the pandas should be allright with.

Sorry that was so long, thought i'd give a full background

pinkfloydpuffer

I had a cory who did that. It was in a fully cycled tank, but he died a few days after. I hope yours is just doing that for fun and not cause he's sick.

Kyle

Thanks To everyone for their thoughts and advice! Went back to the LFS, and noticed that the panda corys he still had in stock were doing the same thing in his tanks, which inclines me to think that aecw's friend might have been correct about it being some sort of bacterial infection? (can't find credence for this on the internet sadly). as of today the little guy has not exhibited this behaviour for 4 days, so im hoping things will pan out well otherwise everyone is feeding and looking ok