Sick fish

[nitrous]

after seeing my clown loach have ich i treated the tank with some aquarium salt which works well killing my ich at early stages. so i put some in then the next day i see my rainbows near the top of the tank. today i found one dead and now the other one of the same species is sitting at the top. why is this? my heat was at around 80 but im having it lowered to about 76.

 

[tbonem91]

what are your water params? its possible you added too much salt, killed the bacteria and the fish died from poisoning.... or they died from too much salt.

usually fish staying at the surface means they cant breathe well - signs of low O2 or amonia/nitrite poisoning

 

[Alshain]

Without water params, my suggestion would be do a 50% PWC asap and get some of that salt out of there.

 

[nitrous]

i did a test yesterday and ammonia was at or around .5 (probably lower) and nitrites were 0 so thats what made me stumped. i have an airwand on usually all day (except night) which gives them good amount of oxygen so i will just do another water change and se how it goes

 

[Jaybird]

Maybe there's another dead one tucked in there to bring the ammonia up.

I've read that the bubble wants don't really do anything other than agitate the surface water. The actual air bubbles don't increase the oxygen in the tank, but the surface agitation might help a bit. Each bubble spends less than two seconds under the water and doesn't lose any appreciable volume during it's ascent. If it oxygenated the water, the bubbles should get a smaller as they travelled upwards. More plants should help with oxygenation.

 

[Menagerie]

With higher heat, water is less able to absorb oxygen. If the water level is lowered a tad, the filter out flow will be able to splash and that will provide extra aeration of the tank.

 

[nitrous]

its a canister filter and i have a filstar xp2 which is always under the water because i put on the spraybar and its atleast 2 inches below the water level if not less

 

[Menagerie]

I keep the spray bar underwater aiming up to create surface agitation and this has worked well when the tank is healthy and when temp/salt treating for ich.

 

[nitrous]

ya i just did that i raised it up and then turned the spraybar up and now it goes in like a u and goes up out of the water just enough to make some good bubbles for my fish