Tetras find vibrating seizurelike. Tank in funky rut don't know what to do!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Ilovefish302

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 4, 2017
Messages
1
Hey guys new member here! I know it's tough to read a super long post but bear with me please. I will try to make it short and sweet.

recently - week a half ago I received a heavily and I mean heavily neglected tank from a lady moving. Underneath the gravel was so bad when we started to drain the tank and get to the bottom of it the water was brown almost black and looked extremely unhealthy. I get the tank home the fish are in buckets with heater and air stone. I was only able to salvage probably 40% of the water. The gravel was also absolutely disgusting and slimy. I decided to rinse about 6/10 of it and added the rest Unrinsed in order to preserve beneficial bacteria. She has a nice cascade filter but honestly I don't think that it had ever been opened in the last five years. The filter pads were absolutely totally disintegrated. inside the baskets were 3 pads and carbon bag. I had no choice but to dispose of the disintegrated pads but made sure I kept a tiny bit of that media when I replaced the floss pads and I kept the original foam filter inside as well without rinse. I understand a huge water change and all the stuff was a huge shock for the fish. I was thinking it would be a miracle if any survived.

Fast forward or week and a half. I check the water parameters constantly here is why they have been so I'm assuming it's still cycled.
Nitrite-0
Nitrate- 30ppm -->I know this is high I have been doing 20% water changes 2 days in a row and every other day.
Ammonia-0
Ph-7.2
Kh - 180
Hardness 300 ppm

Tank specs -55 gallon
1 angelfish
2 bloodfin tetra
-6 bandit corys (catfish)
1 bala shark

Here is my current problem, There are two bloodfin tetras who seem to be doing fine . All the sudden I come home and their fins are shaking so violently like they are almost vibrating. And their mouths are moving fast. They seem to be able to swim fine and shoot around for a minute Then they both go back to the corner and just start vibrating. I will try to post a YouTube video With a link.

Another concern is my angelfish . He was doing fine for a week then all of a sudden I see him in the bubbles and he literally starts doing flips and swims a little offkilter. Seems totally fine afterwards . Also he has these really weird black spots behind his eyes. It's possible I may not have noticed them when I first got him but I feel like they have appeared recently.

Thank you so very much for your time and knowledge. I know it's a long post. I really started to enjoy these new fish And their personalities. Makes me angry the lady took such poor care of them. I just hope I can figure out what's going on so these fish can live a long healthy life .
-Andrew
 

Attachments

  • IMG_5880.jpg
    IMG_5880.jpg
    245.1 KB · Views: 62
  • IMG_5888.jpg
    IMG_5888.jpg
    252.5 KB · Views: 57
Last edited:
Hi, sorry I missed this. Hope you fish are improving?


Fish vibrating like that I've had from chemicals in the water (immature driftwood in my case) but have also heard of it with stray electricity as well.
 
Back
Top Bottom