Newbie. First tank, just got fish & have a question

[N757QQ]

Hello all,

I have been cycling & trying to decide on salt or fresh for about 2 & 1/2 months. I, obviously I guess, decided to stay with fresh water & went with Malawi peacocks.

I bought 3 pairs from my LFS today. All 3 are male & female as that is the only way that this store will sell them. I have a German red, Regal, and Flavescent.

All of the fish are doing great, from what I can tell, except one. All of the males swam up & down the glass for about 10 minutes then the Regal broke off & started exploring. He is the smallest, at about 3". The other two males are 3-4". The German Red decided to hang out near the Flavescent, but not constantly swimming up & down the glass, then by 30 minutes in their new home, he was looking for food as well, and exploring.

The Flav took about 3 hours to calm down & is now swimming around quickly, but exploring. He has not eaten yet.

I explain all of that because I am new, and from my reading in the past few months I understand that this behavior is normal. The issue I am having is that one female (I do not know which she is) is just sitting in the water not moving around much & not swimming with the others, who are all in a 5 fish group. The other two females are smaller & more dull. The one that is worrying me is bigger & rather colorful for a female. She has a bit of vague color on the very tip of her dorsal, and is a bit colorful along her side, but again greyed out.

She is constantly 'mouth breathing' so to speak, quickly at first when she was in the tank for the first hour, but is now slowly continuing & is still off to herself.

Should I be worried about her? Is this normal for cichlids, because the others are now seemingly at home. Is she possibly pregnant? Is it possible that 'she' is a he that is just an early juvenile, trying to lay low until he gets bigger?

I will post pictures in a few in case that will help. I just hate to think that something is wrong & let her suffer if I can correct it.


Edit to add that the water conditions are:
Ammo: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 30-35ppm
PH: 8.2
Temp: 79.38

I do not have an air stone, but the filter does move & slightly rustle the top of the water. None of the other fish seem to be doing this at all.

Sand substrate, Texas holey rock deco.

She is not listing to one side or the other, She is just stationary in the middle of the tank, initially just above & behind the group, but now on the opposite side of the tank.

 

[N757QQ]

That is her on top in the background

The guys, for s&g

 

[Borderlesscott]

Your tank looks small for the group in question, could be just the photo, what size is it? You also need to do a large water change to get your nitrates down.

 

[N757QQ]

It is a 55g long. There are 6 total fish in the tank currently. I will do a 50% WC as soon as the sun is up. Been up all night watching her & she is still fine but just hanging out.

 

[CraigMac]

I think she's just settling in and nervous. The lack of color and staying in one position, although it could be a sign of illness or from being bullied, is common when the stress of a move and being added to a new tank is occurring. I add new fish in a dark tank and keep the lights out for up to 24 hours.

Keep a close eye on her for any other symptoms but it's probably just stress.

 

[N757QQ]

So, day two. She is still just hanging out mid water level, not moving around much, but I started noticing this morning that the German Red male will swim up to her very very slowly. He literally takes 20-30 seconds to cross half the tank. Once he is right beside her, he flairs all of his fins out & then hangs out beside her.

He will repeat this over & over about every three to five minutes. So, I assume there is something else going on...

I will, of course, keep a close eye on her & if anything starts looking odd, I'll quarantine her immediately. Thankfully I have a 29g that is set up with water & a filter just in case.

We left the lights out for about 15hrs total, and will slowly adjust the lights cycle to where we want it.


edit: (wow I forget something every post) All of their colors are really starting to show. They were bright yesterday, but wow, they are very bright & varied today.


Thanks again all.

 

[N757QQ]

Well, unfortunately, this female died sometime yesterday. I got home at about 11p & started counting fish & looking for fins & eyes (maybe just a newbie paranoia thing, but I want to make sure). She was not doing this at all for the past few days. She was hanging around the group, which is now bigger which I will get to in a bit.

I checked all of the water parameters immediately after getting her out, and everything is still good:

Amm: 0 - .25 It looks like it has a very slight green tint in the yellow
NI : 0
NA : 40 - 60
PH : 8.2
Temp: 79.5

I cleaned the filter media last night, as I will do normally since there are a lot of fish in the tank currently. I did a 50% wc just now which should lower the nitrates (correct?).

I did check her for spots or disease signs & did not see anything. I also did not see any signs of bullying. I am thinking she was sick from the start, or way over stressed about something in the tank.

None of the other fish are acting that way at all. They are all eating voraciously, and sand sifting. I have been feeding them twice per day leaving the food for about 5 minutes because they all seem to have to work up to coming up to the top of the tank & grabbing a pellet. Once a couple have braved the top, most start heading up to eat. She ate one or two days when she was acting normal, but then stopped again & started acting stand-offish again a day before I found her belly up.

We added another 10 fish to the tank, all male peacock cichlids. All are different variations. All are slightly smaller than the 3 males that were first to the tank. The only exception is 3 'blue dolphin' cichlids that my girlfriend wanted. I know they will probably have to go to another tank once they grow a bit more, which I am preparing for now with another 55g just for them that is cycling. I also may use this tank for the females temporarily to get them out of this all male-to-be tank. I am also trying to get the other 2 females a home until my brother can take them. He has a 29g that will be just for them.

I also added another 20lbs of Texas holey rock & a couple of amazon swords to the tank to give the increased number of fish a lot of hiding spots, and to break up line of sight. This seems to have worked well, because everyone is coexisting very well it seems now. No other fish are standing off from the group, and none are acting strange that I can tell from my limited experience.

I know that there is no answer to the question of what caused her to die, at least not without a lot of information that I do not have, but I am really hoping that my other fish are not possibly sick or otherwise hurting & I am too ignorant to notice.

 

[N757QQ]

Update again since I have rechecked the water parameters after the wc:

amm : 0
Nitrite : 0
Nitrate : 30
temp : 79.3
I did not check PH again.

I am thinking that there is not an issue with dissolved o2, but I will try to check that as well. I have extremely small bubbles floating all in the tank, I assume from the bubble wand that I added before I added all of the new occupants.

Another question though. I am seriously worried about this bloat issue. I do not see any signs of it, but being so completely inexperienced & reading as much as I can, I am reading a ton about it. I am feeding my group 2-3 times a day, and dropping 1 algae wafer in at lights out for the bottom feeders that seem to be slow to feed.

Tonight, they have been absolutely ravenous after the wc. At least half of the tank showed up at the top grabbing pellets before they hit the water. Two fish even grabbed food from the tip of my finger as I put it in the water. I put in 5 or so pieces at a time and wait for them to eat all of that, which was literally under 10 seconds, if not instantly. I just dropped 3-4 series of 5 or so pieces in the tank & they were all gone but 1 or 2 that get caught by the filter. They grab those in under 3 minutes still.

I also dropped about 1/8 of a baby carrot that I shredded to a fine size & they went after that like crazy.

So my question is - am I feeding them too much, or not enough. I have read so much conflicting information on the time to leave food, and the behavior to look for when feeding.

A couple say to make sure their behavior is similar to that described above, where they head to the top of the tank as I open the lid. Others suggest that 5 minutes & scoop excess food. Since this is the second day of them all really vying for food, I am not sure how much to put in, and so overly worried about overfeeding that I am scared to feed them to disinterest on their part.

Any help on this? And is bloat so prevalent, and so easy to cause?

I do plan to fast them one day each week, and treat them to variety on the 2 'cleaning days' (1 to clean the filter if I keep up once per week & one to do wc / basic scrub down of the inside glass) but have not done so yet, as I am still working on making sure they are all acting normal & swimming.

Sorry for the spamming of replies & questions, but I am hoping this serves as a log of sorts for other newbies, and think it best to keep everything in one post.

I also re-scaped the tank as I mentioned in the previous post, and will post some pictures soon. All of my cichlids are really starting to color up in the last few hours. I am not sure if that is thanks to a 30%~ish carrot diet for the past 2 days or not.

Just tell me to shh if I am spazzing, but I am really trying to make sure I take good care of these guys. I was obviously interested in them before but they have hooked me (no pun intended) in the last few days with personality & hilarious antics and quirks.