Rixhephtos
Aquarium Advice Newbie
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2020
- Messages
- 4
Hi there!
I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to knowing the ins and outs of fish keeping, so I'm in a bit of a pickle here. We've kept fish for years, always done the same things and never had issues (what we were told to do by fish pet stores), so I'm confused as to what went wrong here and wondering what I can do to fix it.
A little backstory- He was originally sold to us misidentified (as a Synodontis nigriventris, when he was actually a Mystus leucophasis) with a few other fish a kept in a 10 gallon tank. His smaller buddies started mysteriously dissapearing, and he was growing much bigger than the 4 inches they told us he'd get. So we swapped just him to a 20 gallon tank.
I've recently learned that he needs at least a 55 gallon tank, and so I've bought him a 55 gallon and transferred him to that. It's just him in there with all his old plants, decorations, gravel (and some new gravel), same filter (apparently the one we had was meant for 55 gallon tanks), and we transferred over a significant amount of the water as well. We added the tap water conditioner to the tank, portioned equal to the amount of water we added that wasn't from the old tank. These were all steps we've taken before with our previous tanks, with him, and never run into an issue.
He was fine for a night, but now he seems to be gasping. He'll swim around for a while, then sit under the stream of the waterfall from the filter and gasp for a bit, then go back to swimming around.
Is it an oxygen issue? Some sort of chemical imbalance?
Here is a close up of him- https://streamable.com/h296k5
And here is the tank as a whole- https://streamable.com/6icca2
I don't have any test kits handy to test any sort of level of anything, but the tank temp was 76 F, if that means anything.
I'd really appreciate any help on the matter, especially if you guys can point me where to get test kits that'll help solve whatever his issue is.
I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to knowing the ins and outs of fish keeping, so I'm in a bit of a pickle here. We've kept fish for years, always done the same things and never had issues (what we were told to do by fish pet stores), so I'm confused as to what went wrong here and wondering what I can do to fix it.
A little backstory- He was originally sold to us misidentified (as a Synodontis nigriventris, when he was actually a Mystus leucophasis) with a few other fish a kept in a 10 gallon tank. His smaller buddies started mysteriously dissapearing, and he was growing much bigger than the 4 inches they told us he'd get. So we swapped just him to a 20 gallon tank.
I've recently learned that he needs at least a 55 gallon tank, and so I've bought him a 55 gallon and transferred him to that. It's just him in there with all his old plants, decorations, gravel (and some new gravel), same filter (apparently the one we had was meant for 55 gallon tanks), and we transferred over a significant amount of the water as well. We added the tap water conditioner to the tank, portioned equal to the amount of water we added that wasn't from the old tank. These were all steps we've taken before with our previous tanks, with him, and never run into an issue.
He was fine for a night, but now he seems to be gasping. He'll swim around for a while, then sit under the stream of the waterfall from the filter and gasp for a bit, then go back to swimming around.
Is it an oxygen issue? Some sort of chemical imbalance?
Here is a close up of him- https://streamable.com/h296k5
And here is the tank as a whole- https://streamable.com/6icca2
I don't have any test kits handy to test any sort of level of anything, but the tank temp was 76 F, if that means anything.
I'd really appreciate any help on the matter, especially if you guys can point me where to get test kits that'll help solve whatever his issue is.