# Concerned About My Restless Chinese Algae Eater



## Milun (Feb 21, 2011)

Hello, I've had my Chinese Algae Eater for around 2 years now, during which time it has gone from a small, hanging wall tank (15 litres), to a larger, standard tank (30 litres), to the tank we got a fortnight ago, (46 litres).

Now, I've checked the water hardness and PH, which are both in check (Hardness = 8.0 - 9.0, PH = 6.9 - 7.1). During the day today, the catfish has behaved as it normally would; sucking on the class and cowering whenever there was a passerby. At around 9:00PM today however, I noticed a slight restlessness to its actions. It would swim up the side of the glass, then instantly swim down, and repeat this for a while before calming down for a bit, and repeating said actions again. Nothing about it's environment is out of the ordinary outside of the new catfish we bought 2 days ago, an Albino Bristlenose (which hasn't really bothered or interacted with the original catfish since we bought it). Also to note are two large yellow snails which crawled into the ornament the catfish had made it's home at the time, blocking the entrance. This had happened once before however, and didn't cause the catfish to react in this way.

I'm just confused to it's actions. It's calmed down now, but I'd like to know for future reference. Thankyou.


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## plecosrawesome (Mar 1, 2011)

Might be scared about its home being taken away and is going crazy cause it might not have a place to hide.Maybe try adding more hiding spots?


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## Milun (Feb 21, 2011)

Hm... that's not it. In the morning, it's home was vacated, but rather that take refuge there as usual, it started freaking out near the window again. This goes on for about 10 minutes, afterwards it calms down for a few hours, then starts up again.


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## holly12 (Apr 21, 2011)

I do know that Chinese Algae eaters tend to become aggressive when they grow up. They start off small and eating algae, and then become more aggressive as they grow and will even eat the slime coating off of other fish. They don't eat algae when they grow up. Could it be that he's becoming aggressive?

I used to have one when I was in high school and it was super high strung! Once while I was cleaning the tank, he shot up the outflow of the filter (the water fall part) and was in the filter for days before I found him.


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## Milun (Feb 21, 2011)

Hm.... well alright then. I'll take your word for it that's it's no big deal. It's behaving normally at the moment, so maybe it's just a phase.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

What you describe sounds like what I would call 'pacing'. It is common in recently wild caught fish that are not used to being in a tank, which is not the case here. It can also be a sign that a fish is feeling cramped or board or that the fish is trying to get away from bad water conditions. When I see fish behaving strangely I always check the heater is working and test ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Do you have more fish in the tank? Your tank is only about 12 gallons so it would be easy to overstock and adding that last fish could have overloaded it. If you don't have a test kit for ammonia etc I would check you are not overstocked and do a couple of large water changes. Adding more decor and hiding places can make the tank more interesting and comfortable.


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