Bannerfish Emergency

[Chago09]

OK I don't know what in the world is going on.

Ammo 0 Nitrite 0 and Nitrate 10. Temp is 80-81 and ph is 8.3. Salinity is 1.022.

My bannerfish is about 4" and was perfectly fine. He ate this morning and afternoon. I turned off the lights and me and my fiance are trying to watch tv and all we hear is splashing. I look over and all I see is him splashing and flipping and going completly nuts. Keeps swimming in sharp circles at the top of the tank and then flips all crazy trying to jump out. Is this normal behavior??? He is darting around and around sharply and quickly at the surface.


Please Help

[Chago09]

bump

[Simran]

are there any other fish in the tank bugging him? usually fish do that behavior to escape from a predator

[Chago09]

no nothing

[Simran]

how long have you had the fish?

[Chago09]

about 1 month

[kathainbowen]

Your water quality seems about right, although many would argue for a higher SG (it's becoming more and more popular to aim for 1.023-1.025 or slightly higher, but I am for 1.022 in my nano, so no worries).

Are you sure your picasso trigger is not starting to get aggressive? They're one of the most misunderstood triggers as they, like most triggers, are mild mannered and almost puppy-like as babies before getting increasingly aggressive and territorial with age. Thus, they earn a sort of awkward reputation, both touted for being utterly placid and absolutely terrible. The long dorsal fin of the heniochus might be too tempting for even a smaller trigger.

And are you sure there is not a hitchhiking predator from within your liverock? Try a sort of spotlighting technique. Turn off all the lights in the room the tank is in and all the tank lights. Let the tank sit in the dark for a while, perhaps an hour or two, then, without turning on any of the lights in the room, take a flashlight and look into the tank. You may spy a nocturnal predator such as a large crab, mantis shrimp, or even (on the rarest of occasions) an octopus which may be attacking your fish. Otherwise, you might spy some nocturnal aggressions among your fish that you weren't aware of.

Are you sure there is sufficient disolved oxygen in the tank? Truthfully, if you didn't have enough, you would possibly see signs in the other fish. However, if your heniochus is the largest fish in the tank, you'd see symptoms in it first. When fish are oxygen deprived, they tend to move up to the surface and swim as though gasping for air. This can especially happen at night if you have a large refugium in the dark as the macro algae switches from producing oxygen to consuming oxygen and producing carbon dioxide. Check to make sure you have sufficient disturbance of the water's 'skin' to break surface tension and allow for gasious exchange between carbon dioxide in the water and oxygen outside the water. If you do have a refugium, you may wish to rethink your lighting schedule for it, possibly switching it to compensate for a nighttime dip in pH and dissolved oxygen as a result of the nocturnal portion of photosynthesis.

Aside from that, the only other thing I could think might be a problem would be a stray electrical voltage in the water. Truthfully, I've only seen it happen once or twice in my life when the stray current was enough to affect hardy fish, and only in freshwater fish.



However, my money is on predation of some form. It sounds like the heniochus is trying to escape an attacker the only way it can in an enclosed space- jumping and hoping it lands somewhere better!

[WuHT]

... that trashing makes me think of ammonia burn : (sad story)

turning off the lights is probably the first thing i'd suggest as well