Sunshine1010
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Going on month 2 with this 30 gal tank. When i started & before i knew any better, ran the tank for 24 hours with some quick start then immediately threw in 2 tetra glofish.
Believe it or not they were thriving as most were telling me to expect them to die.
However, ran into a problem a couple of weeks ago. Did about a 20% water change then added a live plant & a bubble stone. Soon after noticed my fish weren't swimming as well as they used to... kinda leaned off to the side. Once i read up on it, suspected swim bladder. As i mentioned in my previous post, i never seen freshwater fish attack their food the way these 2 do. They do a series of torpedo moves to the top & as soon as they hit it & grab food, torpedo back down - repeat. So it didn't surprise me that they were possibly developing swim bladder issues from gulping food.
I stopped feeding for 2 - 3 days and once they appeared to be swimming balanced again, feed them peas for their 1st meal. The day after that went back to flakes but this time tried to immediately sink the flakes to prevent them from having to do their normal torpedo moves to the top.
Throughout this whole entire process i was testing my water frequently and my ammonia & nitrite levels would toggle between 0 -.25; nitrates between 5 - 10 with weekly 20% water changes.
My new feeding method worked a little better but within a couple of days they were back to unbalanced swimming. My husband made the comment that they seemed fine prior to the bubble stone so after starving them another 3 days I checked the water. Ammonia levels were the highest i had seen at .50 and i attributed this to the uneaten mashed peas festering at the bottom (took me a couple of tries trying to figure out how to feed these big peas to these small fish). So this time i fed them peas once again with the bubble stone off and did a 30% water change immediately after to pick up as many uneaten peas as possible, and plan on doing another tomorrow. Unlike the 1st time after the pea treatment, they still seem a tad-bit unbalanced.
So here's my questions:
(1) are flakes the best thing to be feeding the tetras? Does a certain brand work better than others when dealing with swim bladder issues?
(2) could the unbalanced swimming be something else other than swim bladder that i should be considering?
(3) do these GMO fish even poop??? Since i've had the tank i haven't seen these fish use the bathroom not once. I'm a detailed oriented person and study these fish A LOT, so i find it odd that i never caught them using the bathroom at all - AND could this be contributing to their balancing issues?
(4) how long should it take a tank to cycle with 2 fish? going on my 2nd month, would think the tank would be cycled by now.
Any suggestions/experiences you can provide will be greatly appreciated!
Believe it or not they were thriving as most were telling me to expect them to die.
However, ran into a problem a couple of weeks ago. Did about a 20% water change then added a live plant & a bubble stone. Soon after noticed my fish weren't swimming as well as they used to... kinda leaned off to the side. Once i read up on it, suspected swim bladder. As i mentioned in my previous post, i never seen freshwater fish attack their food the way these 2 do. They do a series of torpedo moves to the top & as soon as they hit it & grab food, torpedo back down - repeat. So it didn't surprise me that they were possibly developing swim bladder issues from gulping food.
I stopped feeding for 2 - 3 days and once they appeared to be swimming balanced again, feed them peas for their 1st meal. The day after that went back to flakes but this time tried to immediately sink the flakes to prevent them from having to do their normal torpedo moves to the top.
Throughout this whole entire process i was testing my water frequently and my ammonia & nitrite levels would toggle between 0 -.25; nitrates between 5 - 10 with weekly 20% water changes.
My new feeding method worked a little better but within a couple of days they were back to unbalanced swimming. My husband made the comment that they seemed fine prior to the bubble stone so after starving them another 3 days I checked the water. Ammonia levels were the highest i had seen at .50 and i attributed this to the uneaten mashed peas festering at the bottom (took me a couple of tries trying to figure out how to feed these big peas to these small fish). So this time i fed them peas once again with the bubble stone off and did a 30% water change immediately after to pick up as many uneaten peas as possible, and plan on doing another tomorrow. Unlike the 1st time after the pea treatment, they still seem a tad-bit unbalanced.
So here's my questions:
(1) are flakes the best thing to be feeding the tetras? Does a certain brand work better than others when dealing with swim bladder issues?
(2) could the unbalanced swimming be something else other than swim bladder that i should be considering?
(3) do these GMO fish even poop??? Since i've had the tank i haven't seen these fish use the bathroom not once. I'm a detailed oriented person and study these fish A LOT, so i find it odd that i never caught them using the bathroom at all - AND could this be contributing to their balancing issues?
(4) how long should it take a tank to cycle with 2 fish? going on my 2nd month, would think the tank would be cycled by now.
Any suggestions/experiences you can provide will be greatly appreciated!
