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Fred would like to show off his air tube to you guys.


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It was part of a series of event I am calling "Fred blowing his nose".

We did a water change today, and immediately after, Fred started acting really, really strange.  I was really worried about him.  He went to the top of the tank and extended his air siphon, which as we mentioned, we have never seen him do before.

Then he retracted that, and went to the bottom of the tank, and grabbed on to one of the river rocks we have as substrate.  The rocks are of a decent size, and one was big enough for him to wrap his entire foot around.  He was upside down in the substrate, looking like he was trying to come out of his shell, and stretched really thin and really tightly around that rock.  That went on for about 10 min.

Then he righted himself, let go of the rock, climbed to the top again, extended the siphon once more, and took a deep breath.  Like, we could visibly see him inflating.  Then suddenly, he released several large bubbles of air, and then suddenly, as quickly as it all started, things were back to normal.

He has been crawling around the tank as usual since then, no sign of the siphon, he has eaten, he is acting normal (well, normal for Fred anyhow!)

My theory is that when we stirred up the substrate during the water change, maybe he got a hold of something, and all of these things were him trying to expel whatever it was.

Gonna be honest, he had me really scared.  No matter how many other fish we have, Fred is still our showpiece.

Anyhow, I thought I would document the behavior in case anyone else sees something like this.

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I think we figured out what caused the issue.... a rookie mistake on our part.

We HAD been using distilled water, and recently switched to tap water, after testing it to make sure it was within parameters.  But I forgot to let it sit and get to room temp after I got it from the sink.  I am pretty sure it was a temperature shock that made Fred act like that.  

I swear, we are constantly learning things and figuring things out.  One of these days, maybe we can know what we are doing 🤣

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On 6/15/2021 at 10:53 AM, Patrick_G said:

Our family loves watching our Mystery snails! My favorite behavior is when they suck onto a floater and ride around in the filter current. 

Fred used to do that with a chunk of floating cuttlebone, and the whole time I'm singing "A Whole New World...." from Aladdin. 

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