red devil swim bladder

Question
QUESTION: hi Ron,I am hoping you may be able to help us with our Red Devil.  He is about 7 years old and we got him as a baby.  His name is Bruce and yes he is very personable.  Up until about 18 months ago he was going really well, we could tell when he was not happy by the colour he was.  His problem now is he has trouble staying the right way up.  He tucks himself into a corner of his tank to keep from going upside down.  He can still swim the right way up and is still eating but he gets tired and as soon as he stops moving his fins he turns upside down.  We went to our local fish shop and they said it was a problem with his swim bladder. Not sure if it is! The first shop just said "Wait til he dies" and the next shop said there wasn't much we could do.  They suggested trying to give him acidophilis to try to get rid of an infection he may have in his swim bladder but we haven't been able to get him to eat it.  Another person said to pierce his swim bladder like they do when fishing but I am not sure that will make him better and we are concerned it will cause more problems.  He is about 10-12 inches long and we think he is make by the hump he has on his head.  He is in a tank 46x14x17 inches. He is in there on his own and we have river gravel and rocks on the bottom.  He used to move his rocks around and shovel gravel and still does some time but not as much.  He has an external filter (AquarWorld EF1100) We got that hoping that would help and has been on there for about 12 months. We weren't told alot about this fish when we bought him and just got as much advice as we could.  We try change his water once a fortnight and take about a third of his water.  We have recently moved and are now on tank water and so is he.  He hasn't changed from the old house to the new.  We feed him Hikari Cichlid Gold as that was what we were told him to feed him but after reading more about him are not sure. It has colour enhancing and high protein. I don't have anything to check his water and as I said before he would always tell us as soon as he water wasn't right.  We were putting a salt formula in for a while to help as well.  i hope I have told you everything so that you can help us as we have tried getting advice from others but haven't had much success.  He is a great fish and we want to fix him if we can.  The temperature in his tank is about 25 degrees. Thank you.
Jo

ANSWER: Hi Jo,
 Sadly it definitely sounds like he has a problem with his swim bladder and worse yet, there really isn't anything you can do about it. Diet is not going to fix it. Basically, for some reason, he is unable to control the amount of gas he has in his swim bladder so that is why he floats.  Normally a fish can tightly regulate the amount of gas in there so that they are exactly neutrally buoyant -- that is how they can "hover" with no movement.
 Piercing the bladder with a surgical needle has been done, but usually only solves the problem temporarily, plus it takes nerves
of steel.  That said, it might be worth a try.  The good news is that
he is a big fish so the odds of hitting the swim bladder with a needle are much higher than on a tiny fish.  The real problem is why he is
making and retaining the gas.  It could be mechanical damage (impossible to fix) or it could be due to an infection.  The latter would be treatable if we knew what caused the infection, but I have never heard of anyone solving that one, sorry.

 It sounds like you are treating him very well so I seriously doubt if anything you have done "caused" this situation.  I wish I had better news to send you.

-- Ron C.
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
  Cichlid Research Home Page <http://cichlidresearch.com>


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks Ron for your answer. If we were to try to pierce his swim bladder, how do we hold him still?  We had to catch him to move him from our old house to the new one and it was not an easy task.  So I don't like my chances of holding him still to prick him with a needle.  Any ideas on how we might do this. Also, is it worth trying to change his diet and how to do this, as anything that doesn't look what he usually eats he turns his nose up at. Thanks Jo

Answer
Hi Jo,
 It is really challenging to restrain a large cichlid. Basically you have to use a lot of force. They key is to have wet hands.  You must not touch him with dry hands or that will pull the protective slime off his body.  

 You can try changing his diet but I don't hold a lot of hope for that.  He will naturally refuse any new stuff for a while (up to several weeks) but eventually he will eat it, if given no other choice.  

-- Ron C.
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
  Cichlid Research Home Page <http://cichlidresearch.com>