# Frontosa swallowing air?



## Jasoncham2003 (Feb 28, 2008)

Im not sure what type of front i have. He/she is about 6 or 7 inches long and just recently (i think i dont usually watch him during the day) was sitting at a distance and saw him actually out swimming around and then would go to the surface take in air and it would bubble out his gills....Usually i only see him hiding in his rocks and never out im assuming he comes out when the house is quiet and is freaked out but why the bubbles? Anyone?


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## Razzo (Oct 17, 2007)

Jasoncham2003 said:


> Im not sure what type of front i have. He/she is about 6 or 7 inches long and just recently (i think i dont usually watch him during the day) was sitting at a distance and saw him actually out swimming around and then would go to the surface take in air and it would bubble out his gills....Usually i only see him hiding in his rocks and never out im assuming he comes out when the house is quiet and is freaked out but why the bubbles? Anyone?


It seems like your fish is stressed. I had a female a few weeks ago that was holding eggs when I moved the fish from the 125 to the 265. She swallowed all the eggs and was going to the surface to grab air bubbles and she would attempt to tumble the air bubbles until they were gone. In my case, it was stress over the move and loss of eggs.

Russ


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## cichlidgirl1 (Sep 17, 2007)

I have heard of this before. Have you removed the airstone to see what it does ? If your worried about oxy content you can lower the waterlevel of the tank a inch or two and let your outflow from the filters tumble into the tank, this creats surface agitation and also produces tiny airbubbles in the water column. I have no airstones in any of my numerous tanks and my oxygen content is fine.


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## Jasoncham2003 (Feb 28, 2008)

i dont have airstones....just my canister filter outlet agitates the top of the water....i havent had an airstone for a few years all fish fine. the fish is fine other than just getting air at the top.


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## Charles (Feb 25, 2003)

It happened to my female if under a major tank clean up. It will go away.


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## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

Based on the hiding behavior I agree with what the other have said, but in general I have seen that behavior by my Mobda juvies. I have Calvus, Julie's, and Synos in the tank and the Moba are the only ones that do it. Basically every onc ein a while there will be a Moba at the top of the tank looking up and it will take a few "bites" of the top of the water and then give up and go back down to the bottom. And when they do it bubbles come out of their gills. It's weird because they almost never go to the top of tank preferring the mid-bottom range.

In my case it seems they think they are looking for food (which all they ever do). There is a dead spot in one part of my tank where the surface is not agitated so it develops a layer of dust on it. This is always where I find them looking around. If you look from the side of the tank up to this area I can see why they think there is potential food there.

Although, this "eating" behavior is not as bad as when they try to eat the poop that is being sucked out by the vacuum during cleaning. The problem is the clear plastic of vacuum is in the way. Its actually quite amusing to watch them bump into the plastic vacuum, especially when the bigger poops take a while to get sucked out so they kinda of float in place for a while - no matter how many times they bump into the plastic they just keep trying to get at it.


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