Fish Swimming at surface...

[HiJaC]

Hi,

I picked up a group of 10 rummienose tetra last week and have been happy enjoying their schoaling around the tank.

But two of these fine fish seem to be prone to long durations of sitting away from the group at the surface of the water with their mouths facing up.

Today I picked up 4 Blue Rams which 3 hours into the tank seem to be doing the same thing.

Why is this?

The other 30 odd fish in the tank seem fine.

Thanks,

John

 

[Lance M.]

How big is the tank and when was it set up?

What are the water params? Do you/did you dechlorinate the water? What filter(s) do you run?

 

[rich311k]

How much surface agitation do you have. Sounds like either a lack of O2 or ammonia/nitrite poisoning.

 

[Zagz]

I would agree with possible ammonia or nitrite poisioning. Depending on tank size and length of time set up with the amount of fish you have you may have cycling issues or ammonia spikes due to the addition of the new fish in such a short time.

 

[HiJaC]

Hi,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, have been busy and doing some major work on the tank to try and sort things out.

To answer the questions above first -

The tank is a 174 L (46 US Gal) corner tank which was setup a few months ago.

I do dechorinate the water every change. Which I do a weekly 50% atm. Running a Fluval 205 external filter. Which came with the tank from the manufacturers.

The normal water params are -

PH - 7
NO2 - 0 mg/l
NH3NH4 - 0 mg/l
NO3 - 5 mg/l
KH - 4
PO4 - 1.5 mg/l

The params taken the day after I posted were -

PH - 6.5
NO2 - 0 mg/l
NH3NH4 - 0 mg/l
NO3 - 5 mg/l
KH - 4
PO4 - 5 mg/l

Obviously i was alarmed by the odd PH and very high phosphates, but i'll come to that in a minute.

The surface agitation is weak. The heads for the outflows are a couple of inch's from the surface so they only move the water about. But the tank is heavily planted and I was working on the assumption that they would add enough O2 to the water for the bioload.

I added approx 4 new tetra size fish two weeks ago, and added the Blue Ram's last week. But moved them back to my quarantine tank after I first posted to see how they faired. They are all happy now if anyone is wondering. To make room in the quarantine tank I moved 3 dwarf cichlids and 2 otos into the big tank. Overall thou I don't think its ammonia or nitrite poisioning or spikes. The water params don't indicate this.

I lost one of the rummienose who was at the surface shortly after first posting. And came home the next morning to find one of my old large female Black Widow Tetra swimming badly having trouble with buoyancy. Obviously alarmed I placed her immediately with the Blue Rams in the quarantine tank. More of the fish were at the surface by this time.

While checking on her periodically swimming in circles trying to stay down I ran the tests details in the second set of results above. And a bit shocked by the results I did a 75% water change while clipping and rescaping the tank a bit (results i will post elsewhere). During the cleaning a hoovered up a massive amount of mulm from the back of the tank in areas i'd never been able to reach before when the driftwood was in. I think this had alot to do with the very high phosphates.

After the clean up the fish were alot happier. Today when I came back the 3 dwarf cichlids 1 neon tetra and 1 silver tip tetra were at the back of tank at the surface, this was before the lights came on. I lowered the water level a touch so there was more surface agitation and did a small water change to try and get a bit more O2 about and now only 1 dwarf cichlid is at the surface.

The PH drop

So...pretty much the bit i failed to mention in the first post was that Id finally got around to putting in the CO2 injection kit i've been sitting on for 3 months.

I'd installed it mid week last week and set it on what I thought was a bubble every second turn of the diffuser to run in for 48 hours as the instructions said. This was on Thursday last week.

I'd checked on this a little over the days afterwards, but when I went in to do the big water change I was shocked to see the amount of bubbles double what I had originally thought i had set it to. Thereby the PH crashed to 6.5.

I put it down to a bubble every 10 seconds or so and I have a PH control to add to it to prevent over dosing again.

At this very moment it is turned off.

My concern is that I have this lovely piece of kit to make my planted tank go crazy but I won't be able to use it as the O2 levels will be too low for the fish. - am i wrong in this assumption?

Thanks,

John

p.s The Black Widow Tetra has made a full recovery and should be reintroduced to the large tank and her famaily any day now.

p.p.s I have the Ph back up at 7 again now.

p.p.p.s The tank in pics. http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=98706

 

[HiJaC]

Hi,

A few developments,

The returned Black Widow Tetra is fine and fully recovered in the big tank.

I've been changing 10% of the water per day for the last few days to try and get my PH back to what i assumed to be my normal of 7. The first couple of days each morning there were a few fish (normally the dwarf cichlids I had moved from the quarentine tank) at the top of the tank.

After the water change, and a couple of days when i left the levels low for a few hours to allow more surface agitation most of the fish has stopped hanging about at the top. And if they were it would only be in the mornings when the lights were off when the CO2 levels were at the highest.

Interestingly I setup the PH monitor for my JBL co2 kit this week and have been trying to get it calibrated. The first readings were coming out at 6.58 Ph so I was a bit concerned that I must have really crashed my PH the week before when running in the CO2 difuser.

The reading on first day went up from 6.58 at the start of the day to about 6.66. After that days water change it went up again a morning value of about 6.64 to about 6.71. Yesterday it dawned on me that i should recalibrate the sensor with the same temperature of buffer solutions as the tank water. After doing this it read 6.7 when i started and finally reached 6.8 by the end of the day.

So hope fully with a little more water changes i can get a true PH value and work out if i can get my Co2 on for any real time.

I'm aiming to fertilize down to that 6.8 value from a base of 7. Hopefully which this range it should stop the last female dwarf cichlid sitting at the surface. Although i'm actually going to move her, her sister and their male harrasser back into the quarentine tank when i move the blue rams back into the main.

Thanks,

John