HHHEEELLLPPP sick ram :(

[har-2109]

Ammonia: 0.5
NO2: 0.0
NO3: 6.0
pH: 8.2

Hi, one of my two rams is lying on its side and i have seen it swimming in loops aswell. It only started about an hour ago, just after I fed them.

From reading round it seems like it could be the swim bladder, caused by overfeeding. It could be possible, as I did just drop the food in and walk away, but I have had them 8 weeks, and they never seem to eat much. They have been fed a mix of Bloodworm, brine shrimp and flakes, but with each they seem to chew it and then spit it out, then eventually one of the platies steals it.

I will not feed the fish for a few days, to see if that helps, but all sugestions and comments are welcome.

There is a few pictures here, 2 of the fish, a full tank shot and a pic of the readings. The fish is by the triangular shaped rock, roughly in the middle of both pics.

Also, why does the hagen nitrate test say to use 5 drops of bottle 1&2, but bottle 1 is 10ml and bottle 2 is 17ml?? Surely this is a bit pointless.

Thanks for any help.

edit:
If you need more details the tank is a rio 240 (4ft, 240L) the filter is a bluwave 7 internal 700lph (could this be the cause of a constant .25 - .50 ammonia level). Stock is roughlt 20 platies of assorted sizes (the sods just wont stop breeding) 2 rams and a gold spot pleco (I know it will most probably out grow the tank and are prepared to move him when the time comes).

 

[har-2109]

he died.
How clever are these fish? Just when i woke up this morning, the healthy one was picking at the ill one, but now hes dies, its not interested. Did he know the other one was in pain, and was he trying to put him out of his misery?

Also, if this is caused by some form of parasite or bacterial infection, how do i stop it from spreading to the other fish?

Cheers

 

[jpchin]

i have 2 rams so i feel bad for you since i know how beautiful they are. two things i can say about your water. rams like a low ph somewhere around 6-6.5 yours is 8.2 that's high for south american rams. also any ammonia reading is bad . .25-.50 is very high. you need to do a 50% water change and test everyday. you may need to do a change daily( maybe only a 10-15% after the big 50% water change) until it reads 0. are you cleaning your gravel? you should clean only about 1/4 of the tank each week so you don't take out too much good bacteria. search this site for causes of ammonia build up. you can find a ton of info. good luck.

 

[siva]

They should be able to adapt to your pH, it's the ammonia they can't adapt to. How long ago did you set up this tank? Did you cycle it before adding fish?

 

[har-2109]

The tank was fully fishless cycled before adding them. This was around 3 months ago.
My tap water measures .25 ammonia, and the tank constantly seems to measure .25 - .50

I use API liquid test kit, if tap water measures .25, could the test kit have a zero error?

I also use aquasafe dechlorinator, which doesnt remove ammonia.

 

[fishfanatic]

The tank was fully fishless cycled before adding them. This was around 3 months ago.
My tap water measures .25 ammonia, and the tank constantly seems to measure .25 - .50

I use API liquid test kit, if tap water measures .25, could the test kit have a zero error?

I also use aquasafe dechlorinator, which doesnt remove ammonia.

I had a problem a few weeks ago with a test kit reading crazy high numbers. I later found out that they expire fairly quickly. You might want to figure out how old the test kit is.

 

[siva]

Well the thing is, if your tap water does have .25 ammo, you should be able to use a good dechlorinator like Prime that will detoxify the ammo until your tanks bio-filter takes care of it. It doesn't remove the ammo so it will still show up on your tests. But yours never goes away...that's the problem. I would try another ammo test kit just to make sure. Since the tank cycled has it always had this ammo reading or did it start happening at some point?