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Last week my wife and I went to the petshop and bought a pictus catfish. I've seen them around at many differet stores and being catfish are my favorite species (both to have in aquarium and to fish for ) I bought him and put him in my tank. I noticed all the pictus cats I had seen have been really active going back and forth through the tanks. My question is mine has found a particular corner and doesn't hardly ever move other than the occasional circle. Do you think he is sick or is it just him acclamating? I haven't seen him eat anything either. He looks good still he just isn't active. Any responses are appreciated. Thanks!
bluenewt

Maybe the pictus is just getting used to the tank. How is the pictus'deportment. Are the fins erect. Is the respiration normal? Did you check your water parameters, pH, ammonia, nitrates? If everything checks out OK watch the fish closely for the next few weeks annd look for any signs of disease.

Mark

Thanks for the post. The water is testing good so I don't think thats a problem. I did take a real good look at him today and his breathing is good, but he is showing signs of Ich Nobody else has it so he must be stressed for some reason. I guess I'll have to treat him for that and see if thats what has him feeling like poo. I didn't notice the white spots till today though. I believe its half dosage for cats, I'll have to check on that though.

I see that you have 2 tanks. It is always best if possible to quarantine new additions in a separate tank to avoid the problem you are now having. Check the labels on the medications to see if they are Ok for the pictus. Raise the temperature in the tank to the high 80's.

Mark

Thanks again for the post. We have a 10 gallon tank I thought We could use for a hospital tank, but unfortunatly we just have the tank. No heater or filter. So I am gonna have to treat him in the tank he is in. I turned the heater up to 80/82 from about 78. Its not what he needs I guess but I don't want to mess the other fish up to much either. I changed some water and tomorrow I'll change out 5 gallons. I'm not sure sure how often to do the water changes while I'm medicating, but for the first few days I'll do some partials. The Ich meds are in the filters are out and we are hoping for the best. We want "Roach" to pull through. Thanks again!

Add a few. They like company and then display a much livelier behaviour, and because it's a species that isn't nocturnal you can enjoy them throughout the day.
But first you have to get rid of the ich of course.
And mind the barbs. They may be nippy sometimes, especially to fish with long fins and/or long barbels.

but if you do decide to get another pictus,please dont make the mistake that i did and only have 1 new one, because you will have 2 pictus just sitting in corners and whenever they come close they wil flap around against eachother holding on to eachothers fins!!get 2 new ones and they wil patrol in true pictus style!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the Posts. I really like the Pictus although I didn't really do my homework on them before I bought him. I bought him at a Mom and Pop type store and the guy there is really nice and seems to really like what he does. Since I have been doing some research I have read they get pretty big. Right now we just have the 2 3o gallon tanks so I was afraid to group them like they would like. We watch him after the lights were dimmed and he moves around a bit, not a bunch but some. We medicated yesterday and I'm gonna go find him some type of cavish type cover to make him more compfy.Right now he sits under one of those cheap plastic ledges we put in one corner. As far as the barbs go they play tag with each other but as far as we have seen although they swim through every ounce of water in the tank they don't wess with the others including the little 1/4 inch albino cor*ys. I'm guessing maybe he got a chill somehow on the trip home and it stressed him out. Its been 2 weeks now hes been in the tank though so I'm not sure.

Well I have on update on "roach" the pictus. He is still kicking and his Ich is still there alittle. He moves around a bit more than he used to but mostly in a tight circe or up and down in a straight line on the side of the tank. I did by a test kit to check my levels -- glass tube instead of the 5 pad variety because it seems I should have had some kind of reading and I didn'y. I do know.
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 10
Nitrite 2
Ph w/ high test reads 8.0
Temps at 80

Our tank has been set up now for about a month. We had to take the filter out for a small Ich fight with the green tiger barbs and now the filter has been out for the pictus fight with Ich. I have been changing water 5 gallons a day for the past 2 days (today will be the third).I put A teaspoon of stress coat for conditioner and less than a tablespoon of doc wellfish's aquarium salt in each bucket and let it sit overnight. I read most of you bio bugs stay in your filter so we have this problem.
a. No filter=no bugs thus the high nitrate/nitrite levels?
b. I assume the water changes are depleting the water of even more fishy organisms that are supposed to be good?
c. should I even be doing the water changes while I'm medicating? I change the water then I add the meds but the instructions say to do the water change 48 hours AFTER the last Ich treatment which runs about three days. I'm kinda confused on what to do so any suggestions would be appriciated.
I also wanted to mention after yesterdays water change one of the green tiger barbs got really pale. He seems to be doing better in coloring today though. Thought I might mention that too.
Thanks for any responces!

Taking the filter out for medication is probably just as bad as leaving it in the tank. You should remove any active carbon filter media (not that active carbon filters do much good after a few days anyways). If you have a filter sponge that is "black", it's probably a carbon filter. Replace with a "non-black" filter media (they come in all colours, but active carbon ones are black, and almost every non-carbon filter pads are non-black, but are usually blue, yellow, white, etc).

The reason you should not have active carbon filters when medicating is the obvious fact that they are there to "soak up" various chemicals in the water that may be harmfull to the fish. Amongst the things they "catch" is the medication, which you _DO_ want to stay around in the water, not sit in the filter.

However, some (most?) medication will kill the "good bacteria" in the filter. Whilst this is no good, it's just as bad to take out the filter, unless you have a second tank to put it in. Further, unless you replace the media in the filter, you may want to pump the medication through the filter to kill any of the "bad bugs" that may have lodged in the filter, so that when you put the filter back in, you get the "bad bugs" back...

If you replace the filter media (or letting it dry out by taking it out of the tank), you're effectively starting from scratch with the maturing of the tank. So although the tank has been up and running for 4-5 weeks, the system is still not mature if you've taken the filter out for a few days at a time.

The cycle works like this:
Fish eats food.
Fish releases ammonia.
Ammonia is turned into nitrite by some "good bacteria"
Nitrite is turned into nitrate by soem other "good bacteria".
Nitrate is taken up by plants and removed by humans when replacing the water.

[The above is slightly simplified, but works for anything by molecular microbiologists caring about the intimate details of how it works].

The good bacteria that does this aren't exactly the most hardy version, hardly what we'd call a "superbug". They are sensitive to medication, chlorine and several other things. They live in your filter, on the surface of rocks and gravel, the glass of the tank, etc. Most of them are in the filter, but some are in other places.

The sign that you have a good set of "good bacteria" is that you get a reasonable reading of nitrate, zero nitrite and zero ammonia. You have 2ppm of nitrite, which means that the good bacteria isn't efficient enough at taking nitrite into nitrate. There's really nothing you can do about that, but to change more water... This will slow down the maturing process, but it will make the fish feel happier and healthier. So do maybe 50% water change.

I personally don't "age" my water. I just add the required amount of stress-coat (two pumps of 1ml per bucket of about 13-14 liter, or about 3-4 gallon) to the water when gettting it out of the tap, stir it, carry it from the tap to the tank and tip it in {carefully of course). Works fine for me. Assuming the water in the tank hasn't been there a long time [and thus is dramatically different from the fresh water from the tap], there's nothing saying you can't change 50% of the water every day, if you feel like. The only reason not to do BIG water changes is if you change the temperature or other water parameters dramatically, but if the water is being changed often, the change should be minimal.

You really should have a nitrite of zero. Nitrate should be less than 20-25 for most fish, but a little higher isn't a big problem. Nitrite and ammonia is deadly, and 2ppm of nitrite is definitely high.

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Mats

Thanks for the post. I replaced the filter minus the charcoal bits in the middle. I do have a black sponge in front of the biobag so I'm trying to figure out if it is carbon based as you said. I read the box and of course it doesn't say. I will try and find a different color for the WHisper 30 at the pet shop though. I do have one of the carbon things on the undergroun bubbler though. Is it sucking out all the meds do you think? I tried taking it off but they snap tight and the one I tried to get off splintered the plastic a bit so I quit trying. To the other posts about getting more I say I will have to see if he makes it or not and wait for awhile to see how he does. I have read since that the Pictus is prone to Ich soooo after my water cycles Ichless for a while and my water tests even out Nitrite/trate if Roach does well then who knows. Everyone needs a friend. I am going to let the meds take hold so I'm gonna wait for a water change unless the nitrites/trates get way out of hand. Then in a few days with any luck hopefully the Ich will deminish and the water change won't be so bad.
Once again thanks for the info.
bluenewt

bluenewt wrote:I am going to let the meds take hold so I'm gonna wait for a water change unless the nitrites/trates get way out of hand.
bluenewt

Bluenewt: Maybe I didn't express that clearly enough. 2ppm of Nitrite is "WAY out of hand" already. It may not be lethal to the fish, but it's way high.

Nitrite is a bit like Carbon-monoxide for us humans, that it prevents the normal breathing of the fish. This means that the fish is constantly short of breath, something that will not help your fish in it's effort to get well.

My suggestion would be to replace sufficient water to get the Nitrite low (less than 0.1 preferrably, but that may take a few days of 50-60% water changes). You will want to add suitable amount of medecin to the new water too, so that you keep the medication going.

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Mats

Thanks MatsP for clearing that up. I will do a a 50% change today.
I tested the water again yesterday and it was still reading to high and I did a 25%change. The meds say to treat for at least three days then 48 hours after do a water change that is why I posted what I did. The test reading were freaking me out though so I caved and did the 25% change. I guess your saying dead fish won't mind Ich. I will continue the water changes.

bluenewt wrote:I guess your saying dead fish won't mind Ich. I will continue the water changes.

Well, sort of at least. It's more like if you have a heavy fever, pneumonia and sitting in the garage with the engine running and the door closed, breathing in the fumes from the car for some time, you'd best get out of the garage and get some fresh air, before treating the pneumonia with antibiotics and fever with aspirin or whatever.

So in your fish's case, the first step is to get it into water that is nice for it.

Ich will potentially kill fish, but so will nitrite. And the fish is not being able to fight the decease itself because it's not breathing properly. Treating the Ich is important (and by the way, replacing the water, and preferrably vacuuming of the sand, will remove some of the Ich-eggs that will later attack the fish again).

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Mats

as mats says, nitrite stops fish from breathing. it binds to fishes haemoglobin in it's blood cells, blocking the oxygen from binding with it.

also there is less oxygen in the warmer (30C) water you need to fight ich.

it's very important to add extra aeration at this stage. do this by moving the filter outlet so it disturbs the waters surface as much as possible.

you should also add an airstone to pump fresh air into the system.

i hope it works.

Unfortunatly Roach didn't make it. Live and learn I suppose. Now just to make sure everyone else gets better. Thanks everyone.

bluenewt wrote:Unfortunatly Roach didn't make it. Live and learn I suppose. Now just to make sure everyone else gets better. Thanks everyone.

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately it happens to all of us at one time or another...

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Mats