Ornate Bichir needs Help

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Cloud-9

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May 11, 2003
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My 7 year old ornate bichir is sick. This is the first time he's been sick. The edge of his fins are turning whitish/grayish, and he is listless at the bottom. I see no cottony tufts. His tank mates, a 3-inch Green Terror and a 3 inch Pictus Cat are both doing well. They have been together for one year. They do not fight. All of his fins are affected, in exactly the same way and manner.

Now, a few days ago, I noticed that a roach fell in the tank the bichir ate half of it. Could that have something to do with it? I have also started feeding him frozen krill for about one week now. He just started showing symptoms yesterday.

Is it fungal or bacterial? What is the best medication? I have the following on hand:

Melafix, Kanacyn, and Paragon. I'm not sure if the pictus cat can tolerate Paragon.

Thanks
 
I highly doubt that the roach was the cause of this...

If I had to venture a guess (assuming that your water is fine, because the other inhabitants are OK), I'd say your fish is just plain old... 7 years is old!!!

If you have another tank you can put him in, do that, and dose the tank with Melafix. I really like Melafix because it cures a lot of different ailments, which is good when you don't know exactly what the problem is. If you don't have another tank, dose your main tank with the Melafix - it won't hurt the other guys.

Good luck!

~Tara
 
Thanks

Hi dwayne,

Thanks for the reply. I added Melafix to the tank, as well as Kancyn. The fish is doing much better. His/her fins are now regenerating very fast. He's back to swimming normally and eats. The swelling in his belly has gone down quite a bit, although it is still larger and plumper than normal. I am feeding sparingly until all of the swelling has gone down.

I have been reading quite a lot since then. I found out that krill can sometimes cause problems. I also realized that the frozen krill that I had been feeding had been sitting in the freezer for a year. And my freezer is not the best in the world. Perhaps the krill went bad. I noticed that the other fish wouldn't touch it. Only the bichir would gulp it down.

The melafix smells nice. I can smell the scent away from the tank.
 
I'm glad your fish is on the mend. I also like the smell of melafix... it reminds me of the days when I was a little kid, and used to get a sunburn at the beach, and I'd come home and my mother would put Noxema on the burn to cool it down!

Keep us posted on how he/she is doing!

~Tara
 
cloud-9- is it hard to keep an Ornate Bichir? I want to keep one.
 
Ornate Bichir

Dramatic_Fish,

No, as far as my experience with this one. I put this one through quite an ordeal. I was a classroom teacher, and this fish spent some time in the class tank. This is the first time he/she has gotten sick. I attribute that to the krill that I was feeding.

Please read up on the literature. There are some things you need to be careful of. Like making sure that you have a tight lid on the tank.

It took some time for the fish to get used to my tank. I got him/her at a small size. The pet store did the easiest thing and fed the fish live foods, like shrimp. I bought some ghost shrimp and placed a dozen in the tank. The bichir has an interesting stalking technique. Anyway, I fed shrimp sparingly. And then, I would put a very small floating pellet (Tetra Dorored at that time) on the water, to the side of the glass. Eventually, the bichir's sense of smell would lead to the pellet. It would investigate for a while, and eventually gulp it down. That's how I got it used to eating pellets. It's primary diet for the past seven years has been Tetra Jumbo Min and Hikari Sinking Carnivore. The bichir is slow. It might be better in its own tank to ensure that it gets enough food. You may have to wait until dark at first to feed it. After a while, it will adapt to your tank. They love ghost shrimp but I believe the Jumbo Min is a better diet.

By the way, this bichir slowly eliminated his tank mates of praecox rainbows, corydoras (I didn't get to feed it for a few days and it bit through the underbelly of the corys), white clouds, and algae eaters. He got to them when the tank was dark.

Right now, he is bigger than the Green Terror. But I will have to move the GT when it gets bigger or it might kill the bichir. The bichir does not bother the much-smaller pictus cat. Probably because the pictus is active when it's dark and the bichir is too slow to catch it when it's light.

Let me know what you decide to do.
 
I am going to wait on getting the bichir. Mainly because the fish that I want to keep in my first tank are going to be small fish. So I dont want him attacking them. But, when I get another tank and more experience I think I might actually get one. Thank you so much for the help. :D
 
Any chance the roach came into contact with any pesticides? Often, insecticides are piscicides as well--using chemical treatments for insects should be done with extreme care to avoid the treated insects or any of the chemical from coming into contact with aquariums, ponds, streams, lakes, etc.
 
OrionGirl,

No pesticides or insecticides. It might simply be that the roach shell is too hard to digest. I'm not sure how that would cause the fungus/bacterial infections on the fins. Perhaps the roach or the krill that it had been eating was very dirty. In the case of the krill, it had probably gone bad. I will stick to Jumbo Min and Hikari Sinking Carnivore from now on.
 
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