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My Upside Down Catfish is acting strange. Typically he stays in the top left corner of my tank behind the on glass thermostat and under some fake plant. It will swim up and down the corner of the tank when I feed the other fish but other than that he will not move much during the day for obvious reasons.

The strange behavior only seems to happen in the morning. Generally she stays right under the water level but now she is leaving her head out of the water kind of like a croc but a little further out. My thought was that she hunting some bugs but I am not sure. I ll try and get a picture tomorrow morning but its a tough angle. None of my tank parameters have changed significantly. It could just be normal behavior but its not something that I have seen in the two years. Any thoughts?


"No whammy, No whammy, No whammy, STOP!!"

1984-Michael Larsen On Press Your Luck

You're right about one thing. Upside down catfish are, in fact, insectivorous. However, there is another possibility I've thought of.

My thought is that it is possibly a lack of oxygen. This especially holds true if you have plants. During the night, plants do not photosynthesize and absorb oxygen just like animals do. Thus, the point of lowest oxygen in a planted aquarium is right before the sun rises and the plants start to photosynthesize and release oxygen again. Of course, why only your catfish is showing the behavior and not the other fish is a bit of a mystery.

Also, I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Upside Down Catfish are one of the few schooling species of Synodontis. It may stay still for long periods of the day, but with conspecifics this fish may actually become active. I don't have experience with this species myself, but I do know the extreme change in behavior that can occur just due to adding more conspecifics.

I could be kind of wrong about this since I haven't kept this species, though. Someone else may be able to weigh in on this behavior. IMO, if your fish isn't actually showing stress, it's probably not a big deal.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

Its worth mentioning that some of these catfish get problems with swim bladder disorders, and it is the orientation of this bladder that dictates the nature of their upside down swimming, and the orientation often changes as they mature. This of course is an area that consequently is subject to errors, and these catfish may sometimes during certain developmental stages,experience bouyancy issues causing them to breach the water surface more regularly than they would consciously be intending to do. Sometimes this is self correcting, but you can support them by avoiding large meals that may cause compression on the swim bladder.

Unfortunately although perhaps in otherwise good health some catfish may have a permanent disablement of the swim bladder, which ultimately ends in debilitation.

Keep temperatures, water quality consistant, and feeds on the light side , and any problems your fish is experiencing should rectify themselves with time, unless of course it has a genetic problem with organ failure or a bacterial bladder problem.

These fish are micropredators, grazers and opportunist insectivores, so in theory breaching the water surface outside of feeding times would really be an indication of a problem rather than normal behaviour.

Otherwise, metagon is right, they do tolerate company, and will shoal with their own species, however I dont think this will necessarily change his behaviour as regards breaching the water surface.