gills sticking out. swimming mostly vertically head up.

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flatty

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
77
Location
Central Florida
I am having an issue with one of my black neons. My wife notice today that it was swimming oddly basically vertically with his head up . Seems to be swimming swiftly in small bursts about midlevel of the tank. His gills seem to be sticking out a good bit. It is possible his back is bent slickly awkwardly.

I checked the water parameters and the ammonia, nitrates, etc look good. the PH has been creeping lower in our city water supply( 6.5 or so) so a few days ago I tried raising it to about 7.2(tried for 7). I know now i should have just left well enough alone.

The tank is a 36 gallon planted bow front close to fully stocked and has been set up for two years. I have a hob and a canister filter and both are operating fine. The fish have all been in the tank from virtually the beginning.

I do weekly water changes in the 30-40% range and vacuum the substrate during those changes. The only change I have made was trying to raise PH. What am I possibly looking at here as the symptoms dont seem to perfectly match anything.
 
Pretty tricky :( Some thoughts would be:

If he could have been damaged during a water change?

Attacked?

If it happened just after, the ph adjustment might have been too much?

Bacterial infection but should see some other signs of poor health.
 
it is hard to say. it almost seems like he is fighting sinking and swims real fast to get higher in the tank then sinks back down etc. there are times when he swims perfectly normal. he is in the hospital tank and i have only tried once to feed him but he had no interest. I really dont know what to give him to help him recover.
 
Only thought would be to try lowering water height as much as possible to reduce water pressure on him which may help everything adjust back to normal.

In goldfish books they suggest just enough water to cover the back so you would be only looking at a few inches of water. So basically as low as you can get down to several inches of water.
 
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