[littlehorse]

Well, he's still pretty much a bottom dweller, but he's not on his side anymore. I found out he had swim bladder and didn't feed him for 2 days (spanned it out to two since he more than likely got small bits from me having to feed the other fish) and it has corrected him well.

He has started to get "playful aggressive" with a couple of the fish. He doesn't bite them, just sort of chases them around for a second then stops. But I will be keeping an eye on him just in case.

I never knew how well fish did the "sad puppy eyes" The days I didn't feed him, I'd go over to the tank to check his progress, and he'd swim up to the top real quick poke around (looking for food) then noticing there wasn't any, he swam down to eye level with me and just stared. It was so sad and I felt horrible, but knew it had to be done.

So he's playing, eating and looks like his fins are a bit longer and more colorful than what they were.

I recently purchased some cherry shrimp the other day, and await their arrival (sometime next week) so I may start breeding them for his live food. Hopefully that does a good pick-me-up and he will be back to full self in no time!

Thank you everybody who has helped me diagnose the problems and advice on how to treat him. It's REALLY helped and I have a knew hope for a long life for him. I don't fear waking up in the morning only to have to flush him anymore!

 

[littlehorse]

Haha..If we did breed them, we'd still have to wait awhile until he's back to at least 80% good health. It would be neat to see if the babies had the same "puppy eye gene" as these two though.

I'm thinking of going from 3 small tanks (biggest one is a 5 gal) to one 50 gal. wide tank. Making it planted, and putting all the fish in there. I have a snail problem in 2 out of 3 tanks (no thanks to my cousin not checking her own tanks before taking plants out) and I'm going to have to do a full water c hange, new rocks, and since I'm going to put plants in, I can get rid of the fake one in my big tank, and the real ones in the 2 two gallon tanks.

This all depends on if I get this place I'm looking at though. Once I'm ready to do that, I'll be coming here for more advice on how to balance out the tank well enough so it won't need much work.

I figure, if putting Tarzan into a 5 gallon with other fish helped him get this much better, he'll be right at home in the other tank. This way, I can add a few more fish, and he'll still have HIS space.

What do you all think? Good idea or no?