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My favoritest fish, my senegal bichir, is looking a little pale and dull lately. It isnt anything drastic, but I'm wondering if there is anything I can do. The filter in the tank he used to be in broke down, so the tank got reallly dirty, and because he isnt exactly active, sediment kinda settled on him. I've been doing water changes, but it's a cichlid tank, and you know how messy those cichlids are...so, until I can scrounge up the money for a new filter, I've put him in a hospital tank. He's cleaner now, so it doesnt look like fungus like I first thought it was (since all the fishy waste came off of him), but he is a little pale.

Is the palness from different water chemistry in the hospital tank? Possible stress from the move? Or might he be sick? I worry a lot over my baby

When you transferred the fish, did you make sure that he was going into a tank that had identical temp, salinity, and pH? One way to do this is to transfer the fish with some of his own tank water.

Please post parameters - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, temp and pH. Do you use cichlid salt or similar?

What size tank is he in now? How many other fish are in there with him? Was he alone in that other tank? What size was it?

I like running two smaller filters rather than one big one when I can. I've had filters break down on me. And, if one should break, then the other at least provides some bio-filtration. I keep a sponge filter running in both of my tanks since I don't have other filters on them. These provide good bio-filtration, but no mechanical or chemical.

If you've been netting him and the tank was nasty looking that he came from, please use melafix in the new tank, or Pimafix. These are antiseptics and will help prevent any net scrapes from infecting.

Actually, I dont think any of this will be neccessary now. The tank params were all the same-- I discovered he was stressed out because the glass reflected, and he kept seeing tons of bichirs! I did a massive water change and bought a new filter... all fish from the 55 gallon (5 mbuna cichlids) are now in a different tank until it's cycled...again.... thanks for the help though!

- A trick I use for lonely fish in quarantine or hospital tanks is to use a mirror. I guess that wouldn't be a good idea with the birchir