Help needed for Injured Juvenile Ancistrus

[stuart264]

Can anyone offer any advice, I just pulled out one of my Juvenile Ancistrus from my community tank and placed it in my ancistrus fry tank, its very badly injured, its missing its scales from just behind its eyes right the way back to its dorsal fin and its dorsal fin is in tatters,

I have had a few problems with my tank, fish going missing overnight which I put down to a pair of upside down catfish I bought last month or its from fighting with the Raphael catfish I found dead in one of the havens this morning.

Can anyone offer any first aid tips or advice if it would be kinder to euthanise it? (which I don't really want to do as I am fairly sure its a female and my mature female died after spawning 8 weeks back)

[MatsP]

The are very surprisingly able to recover from illness/injury. And I'm sure it's not missing any scales, as catfish are technically scale-less. If it's MISSING the bony plates, then it's probably beyond repair. But I suspect it's just missing the skin on top of the bony plates on the side of the body.

If your upside down cats are

Synodontis nigriventris

, then that's not who's caused the injury - and I doubt the doradid would cause this sort of damage either. It would help to have a complete list of the inhabitants (with scientific names as close as you can get, as common names are often misused/ambiguous).

Are you sure it's not heater burn? I have had this before, where the fish decided to hid under/behind the heater.

--
Mats

[stuart264]

I am positive its not heater burn as the back of the heater (300W Rena Smart Heater) is the exclusive territory of my L204 "Flash" Plec and that heater is built specifically to stop heater burn happening and I lost another juvenile ancistrus about a week or so back that I found with exactly the same damage

Tank inhabitants are

1. Rosy Barbs x 3
2. Odessa Barbs x 2
3. Neon Tetras x 9
4. Clown Loaches x 5
5. Dwarf Clown Plecs x 2
6. L204 "Flash" Plec x 1
7. Panda Cory's x 4
8 Pepper Cory's 6
9. Raphael Catfish x 1
10. Silver Sharks x 2
11 Upside Down Catfish x 1
12 Zebra Danio's x 2
13 Pearl Danio x 1
14 Red Robin Gourami x 1
15 Pearl Dwarf Gourami x 2

[MatsP]

I'd be tempted to say that the L204 are a likely culprit here - they can be quite aggressive - particularly males.

--
Mats

[stuart264]

Don't know, its too young to sex at the moment and seems pretty placid round the other plec's especially the dwarf clown plec's, plus I have had 5 pearl danios go missing which I suspect is the larger upside down catfish which since I put it in the cichlid tank the fish vanishing overnight has stopped.

[Richard B]

The injury is most likely from the 204 or the loaches. I have seen 204 be particulalrly nasty to other plecos. Loaches can be aggressive at times & have the equipment to do damage if they wanted to, but the 204 is the most likely candidate.

If your cat is not actually nigriventris, but a euptera or nigrita which are often sold as upside down cats, then it may well be responsible for danios disappearance. Even silver sharks will munch down plenty of very little fish once they reach 4" or so.

[MatsP]

The L204 will only be aggressive in a territorial fight, which would most likely happen at night.

Can you please identify the fish you call "upside down cat", as besides S. nigriventris there are several other species that are sometimes sold under this name - both other Synodontis species as well as at least one Mystus species.

--
Mats

[stuart264]

Sorry I cant, I fished it out dead around 11pm last night, looks like it died from its wounds from fighting the plec as there was definite signs of plec bite marks on it.