Pictus Catfish Was Attacked And Now Very Sick, Urgent Help Needed!!!

HI all.

My family has a 36 gallon tank with 3 fish: a 5 inch cichlid, a 2 inch pictus catfish, and a 1.5 inch algae eater (unsure what kind). The smaller fish have been in the tank for at least a year, and the cichlid has been here for 6 to 7 years (and probably more, we inherited the tank from the previous owners of the house). The cichlid is pretty peaceful, but curious, so she will chase others once in a while, but in a very friendly fashion.

Two days ago we've started noticing some weird chasing activity between the catfish and algae eater. Dad says that usually the catfish would chase the algae eater. Now the roles became reversed. Yesterday, the algae eater completely exhausted the catfish, chasing it, ramming into its sides, nipping at his head, etc. Like I said, this activity is very new. As a result, catfish started breathing heavily (at times making a "coughing" motion), and keeps tilting to the side. His whisker on one side could be damaged and is floating upward, which could further exacerbate the tilting motion, but I'm not sure. We've separated the catfish to give him some space to recuperate, he has a space of about 5 in x 12 in. He seemed to get better in midday yesterday (less tilting, calmer) but today he doesn't look so good. Not only is he tilting, he's now floating upwards (which mostly doesn't seem to be his choice) but then he comes down to the bottom. Most of the time he's near the bottom on one side.

The damage I see on him is the following: 1. pink mouth, potentially injured from bumping into things. 2. bended whisker floating upwards. 3. potential scale damage on one side, but I don't know this little guy long enough to judge. He does not have white spots or anything like that. Otherwise looks completely normal. We added stress coat yesterday to promote healing and help with stress.

We've done a 7 gallon water change (20-25%) today, ammonia is at 0, for some reason PH is 6.6 instead of the usual 6.8-7, and the temperature went down from 84 to 80 somehow since he last measured it 3 days ago. My dad isn't quite as pedantic as myself about measuring everything in the tank every day, so I'm not sure whether these parameters just dropped all of a sudden or if they've been dropping slowly for weeks.

We know that PH and temp could have something to do with the illness, but since little fish are so sensitive to change, we're unsure of what to do here. If we turn up the temp, it could rise too much or we could be unable to keep it fixed, which could further stress the fish. The other fish seem absolutely fine (the large and the tiny). Should we alter anything? How else could we possibly help? We're losing hope since he's been floating upwards, fish don't really survive that as far as we know, but I'm devastated that we're losing one of our babies here due to an attack, even though for a year they coexisted peacefully. Any help is greatly appreciated.


Some more info: we've turned off the lights yesterday and today in order to keep stress down. Catfish seems to be pretty active when he's moving around, he gets up and swims around after he's been laying down for a bit. What worries me most is the floating and the tilting. Not sure, but sometimes he looks like he's trying to get out of the enclosure (swimming towards the separator) and up and around the area. The algae eater has been repeatedly trying to get into the separated area, so the aggression is clearly still present.

 

If you could, please take a picture of the sick catfish and the algae eater (maybe even the cichlid too, I love cichlids of all kinds ). Most plecos are very peaceful, but it sounds as though you might have a Chinese algae eater, which is not a pleco and is not nice to others.

 

In order: catfish swimming, catfish resting (he's in those states around 50/50), algae eater (was hard to get, but here's his butt), and cichlid! I love cichlids too, they're so majestic! Sorry for quality

 

Oh, in the first picture the white spot on his side is what I thought could be scale damage. He is spotted all over except that place, so I was unsure whether this was there before or not (I don't live with my parents, just visiting, so "the usual" isn't my expertise)

 

In the second picture you can see how his whisker is floating upwards, the other whisker isn't doing that. Might be disorienting him or pulling him up a little.

 

The pictus looks and sounds like he's in a bad way. It may have been the algae eaters fault, but to really hurt the catfish it would of had to tire it out and then suck on it to cause any damage. Unless it's a Siamese algae eater rather than a Chinese one. The solid black stripe makes me think its a Siamese... Does it look like this and have the black striping going straight through the tail and head like that? I'm leaning toward it being some sort of "false" siamese, one of the more aggressive species. I would think about getting rid of it/taking it back to the pet store. There's no reason to keep a fish that harasses the others.

I don't know what to do for the catfish. He looks stressed as can be, but other than keeping the lights off and adding stress coat I don't know what to do.

That's a parrot cichlid btw. They're really friendly and interactive for a fish and he must be pretty old if you've had him for 6-7 years

 

Yeah that's exactly what happened. Exhausted the catfish and sucked on it.

It does look like the siamese algae eater, albeit with a darker top stripe. All these fish look so similar I can't even tell. I wonder why it changed it's behavior all of a sudden, it was completely fine just days ago.

I added 30 ml stress coat yesterday (10 ml per 10 gallons for healing) and 10 ml today. What would be a good amount you'd recommend adding and how often? also not sure if should add more due to water change today.

This cichlid is so friendly, it kisses the tank glass! It's gotta be my favorite. Hope it lives a long long life.

Thanks so much for your help so far. We've just separated the angry fish from the other two, so that catfish would have more space to move around. He seems happier in the larger domain.

 

If it's a true siamese it shouldn't ever of attacked the catfish. I say it's gotta be some sort of evil look alike. I'd just dose the normal amount of stress coat as per the directions. If at all possible, I would also separate the catfish from all the others in it's own "hospital" tank. Injured fish will be picked on by their tank mates, regardless of how friendly they were before. But then again, moving him might stress him out even more and tip him over the edge.... so do what you think feels right I guess. If he's still swimming and eating, I think he might have a chance

 

Yeah I don't think moving him would be a good idea just because we don't have a properly cycled hospital tank and also I don't think he likes to be alone. Even though the cichlid follows him around sometimes, it helps him move around and he has a hiding place for himself. He's definitely active although, of course, a little beat, but I really hope he can recover. The problem is that even if he survives, I'm not sure what to do with the algae eater. We're quite attached to all of the fish now and it's just a bad situation.

 

better picture of the algae eater

 

I think problems will only continue to arise with the algae eater. Having a pic of the head makes it clear he's not a peaceful algae loving Siamese. He's gotta be some variant of the Chinese algae eater, which few people have had success with. They do a great job at eating algae when they're young, but as they mature they like to eat meatier foods, like their tank mates....

 

I think problems will only continue to arise with the algae eater. Having a pic of the head makes it clear he's not a peaceful algae loving Siamese. He's gotta be some variant of the Chinese algae eater, which few people have had success with. They do a great job at eating algae when they're young, but as they mature they like to eat meatier foods, like their tank mates....

 

Just out of curiosity - it's almost been 2 weeks. Did your catfish make it? BTW: That is a flying fox I believe. It's not a CAE - I had one and did a ton of research on it before deciding to return it to the store.