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Harlequins playing dead

justjason88

justjason88

Member
Joined
4 Dec 2011
Messages
108
Location
South London
During a water change about 3 weeks ago something very weird happened. I usually siphon out 4-5 buckets of water which is roughly 35-45% of the water. After i siphoned out the 5th bucket 3 out of the 6 harlequins immediately and simultaneously turned upside down and laid on the substrate. I've never seen this happen before and it's the weirdest thing to watch. The other 3 stayed schoaling while these 3 laid on the bottom and were moving slightly. After about 1-2 minutes they 1 by 1 gradually turned the right way up. 2 re joined the schoal and 1 stayed by itself for a while. Since then i haven't seen any other weird behaviour. Any ideas what the hell this is?

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Jason
 
Shock perhaps? Never saw that when I had some of those, nor with any other fish.
 
are you injecting c02....if so its probably too high, if not ive no idea!
 
i have seen Tetras do this when they are caught in the shops...you always think there's a floater in there, but then they bring themselves back. I'm sure it's a survival technique. I have never seen it in a settled tank though.
 
Very similar routine to what i used to do and my Harlequins used to do it occasionally too, i always put it down to c02....it did seem to be at water change time though, maybe something to do with the filters going off and high levels of c02? No other fish did this though.???
Maybe as Ian said its a play dead survival technique brought about by some stress factors like at water change time, may have nothing to do with c02...
 
Funny you should post this as recently my harlequins are acting crazy, when I feed them 1 or 2 of them zip up to the food and then crash back down into the substrate and lie upside down for like 5 minutes as if their dead! It's weird!
 
Westyggx said:
Funny you should post this as recently my harlequins are acting crazy, when I feed them 1 or 2 of them zip up to the food and then crash back down into the substrate and lie upside down for like 5 minutes as if their dead! It's weird!
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I know this is an old thread but did this get resolved? I've had a couple of Harlequins start doing this in the last two days. They look dead for about 5 minutes, still fully coloured, they then start to swim but shake for a couple of minutes like they hare having some sort of fit. A couple of minutes later they are back normal:crazy:
 
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