Reason my fish swim up and down the glass

[cdawson]

Why do my puffers swim up and down the glass , my monos and scats do it as well just not as much. Do I need more decorations or what?
135g tank
7.5 ph
0.1 nitrites
0 ammonia
1.005 sg and rising (I need to buy more salt).

sorry about lack of data for the nitrates I ran out of the solution, can't get anymore until friday. Also I posted this in general freshwater because this should have nothing to do with the tank being brackish and will get more responses here.

[dbcb314]

Sounds like they see there reflection, or they see you and are hungry

[ChilDawg]

Some fish go up and down along the glass in order to get more dissolved oxygen and to get more water through the gills...the nitrite levels are a little high, so they might be affecting the fish!

[ChilDawg]

Scratch the last one...I have a quote from an article that RTR wrote for AquaSource magazine: "Some active hunters develop stereotyped swimming in tanks. They adopt one area of the tank wall and swim up and down there repeatedly, chronically. To me this is identical to the pacing of caged zoo animals which are inadequately housed. If the environment is larger and more complex you may see less of this. If this behavior appears it is not terrible, just not desirable. Animals in the wild have certain lifestyles, and if they are roaming hunter/gatherers, they “need” to work off some energy – even if just by swimming up and down the tank glass for a puffer or pacing the cage for a captive big cat. If this behavior occurs in your tank, you can control the location where it is done in part by current. Rearranging your filter outlet flows can cause relocation of the selected site. But to get rid of it altogether requires moving the fish to a much larger and more complex setup in my experience (IME)."

[cdawson]

It can't have anything to do with size , they've got a 135 gallon tank to swim around in, puffers are curious fish. If not size then I should add more decorations right? Therefore making a more complex setup. Thanks.

[ChilDawg]

Ask RTR to be sure, but that sounds like it might be the best bet...I am, of course, going off of reading and not necessarily experience.

[Haggisman]

How long has the tank been set up.When I kept scats they did this when I was there(a feeding dance)but other times they explored the tank looking for plants to destroy.

[cdawson]

It's been up for about a week (with fish in it). The scats and monos do it when I walk up to the tank but after about 5 seconds of realizing I'm NOT going to feed them they go about swimming in circles around the tank and decorations. It's the puffers swimming up and down the glass that bother me.

[CHINABOY1021]

These reply interest me. Ive always thought fish did that because they wanted to get out.

I can imagine 10 neons trying to go up and down the glass on a 180 though.

[RTR]

I agree w/ChilDawg, especialy on what I wrote... :p In this new tank it obviously is not size, so it is either insufficiently complex (to them, not to you - different thing entirely) or perhaps just that the whole setup is new. There is a chance that it is also the nitrite - they might in fact be trying to swim to better water or escape. Puffers do not do well with unoxidized metabolites (ammonia, nitrite) at all. Monos don't like that either. I think the scats are a bit hardier to that. Nitrites in BW are not as big an issue as in FW due to the salt content, so I would not bet on this option.

Chinaboy - I've seen small schooling fish display this behavior, but their drives are different fron the hunter/predators. With them it is more likely current and tank size. Pure personal observation - I never see this behavior in my overscaled tanks (fish size to tank size ratio, not stocking density), but have seen it with the school in a smaller QT tank for the same fish.

[CHINABOY1021]

I'm such a newbie.

[ChilDawg]

Gosh, how did I guess that RTR would agree with that post? :)

I hope that it works out for you, cdawson.

[cdawson]

the tank is cycled properly, the post covering this issue is in the brackishwater forum for those interested. They've been fine since I changed the water earlier today, I'm pretty sure that it's all because of lack of complexity. That's ok I've got some driftwood I got at the lake earlier in the weekend soaking right now that's really nice. I got about 300 dollars worth of driftwood for nothing =) It's nicer than some of the driftwood I've seen in the stores.

[Tetratastic]

I have a serpae tetra that went nuts going up and down one side of the tank after this tank mates died... I am assuming he was lonely/bored since he no longer had other serpaes to keep him company (I didn't feel sorry for him because he killed the others - I call him the assassin fish). As soon as I got more he chilled out.

This was my experience - I don't know how helpful it is to your situation, but no one seemed to mention fish that were just plain bored - lol

[cdawson]

it makes sense though, puffer fish are very inquisitive and require that you have alot of pieces of driftwood and such for them to explore.

[RTR]

Chinaboy - there is no penalty at all to being a newbie - all of have been, all of us still are when we try somthing we have not done before. That is what these forums are for - exchange ideas and experiences so that we don't always have to learn the hard way.

[Heady]

Well, I have a blind cave fish that does the same thing day in and day out. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth over the same 6" area in his 29g tank. It obviously is not his reflection since he has no eyes, and the nitrites are 0, so I'm not sure what his problem is. Maybe he's neurotic or something. I have another blind cave fish in the same tank and he's just fine.

[kreblak]

Cdawson,

There is a 700 gallon saltwater tank in a local japanese restaraunt that is filled to capacity with live rock, corals, and macro algae. It is a reef wonderland. It also contains several triggerfish which display the exact same glass swimming behavior, so don't feel too bad about not having a "complex" enough system. This is the most complex and pristine aquarium I have ever had the pleasure of viewing, and these triggers swim up and down the glass non stop. One of the Angelfish does it too. Maybe this behavior is just a fish quirk, or maybe Childawg and RTR are onto something. Anyway, your condition is not unique.