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Usually my brownknife hides in my selfmade tunnel/cave or under this decor i have he can slip up under. However, the last few days, he's been out in the tank, even in the middle of the day, just laying around. I came home today and he was floating there like he was dead. i had to tap him with my net to get him to move around, but he just went back to laying around. i haven't seen him exhibit this behavior before. anyone have any ideas?

Water Params?

(ammonia, pH, nitrIte, nitrAte at the very least)



That'll help rule out certain things.

Tank mates? Any other inhabitants? How long has the tank been up for? I'm assuming it's cycled...how many gallons?

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-Formerly known as the Ferretfish

feed him live brine shrimp n leave the lights off for a full day it will bring him rite back up to good health

lol. ok. a few more details might not hurt

i changed some water the other day and tested it out to see what was going on. ammonia, nitrate and nitrite were all present in little amounts. the water here has chloramine in it, so i add some stuff for that.

i think i've been overfeeding, and that's the cause of the spike. well, the fish seem to really turn their nose up at flakes lately since i've given them frozen blood worms a few times, so they aren't eating as much of the flakes as they used to, so i think an extra bit of food started sitting around. i know that will lead to excess ammonia, leads to excess nitrite, leads to excess nitrate. visicous cycle. tank is almost 2 months old.

setup is currently this
29 gallons. possibly overstocked slightly
1 african brown knife - approx 5-6 inches.
1 peacock eel - approx 5 inches
3 dwarf gouramis - approx 3 in each
2 dwarf puffers - about 1/2 or so each.
1 pictus catfish - abour 3 inches
3 clown loaches - approx 2 - 3 inches ea

i would imagine any floating food is gobbled up by the eel, cat, and loaches, but maybe not all of it?

and i will try some shrimp. there's a wal-mart here that sells ghose shrimp for like a quarter apiece. i bought some before and they quickly disappeared, but that was before i added the knife. not sure who ate them or what happened to them. but i can get a few small ones. maybe some of the other fish will enjoy that snack also.

do your pictus, peacock, and brown knife all have their own hiding places in such a small tank? my brown has his own tree stump which he protects from intruders constantly. if yours has been forced from its "happy place", it may be just sulking around with no place to hide.

i put a hamster tube in there and burried it in the gravel. the eel used to hang out there, but then the pictus started invading, so the eel vacated and just buries himself in the gravel. when i got the knife, he took it and stayed there until i moved some stuff around in the tank a little. now i have it where they can get up under some of the decor and hide, so he had been getting up under that. he doesn't go into the tube anymore, and sometimes goes up under the other thing. but lately just hangs in the tank. i am going to do a little cleaning in it tonight befor ei leave for x-mas, so i will see if something is up with it and that's why he's not using it anymore.