Flashing or Illness?

I’m sorry I ask a lot of questions but I am the type of person that needs to be sure that my fish are okay or else I won’t sleep at night lol.
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Anyway I have an electric blue acara in QT. He/She is a juvenile. The first day I added it in he lost his color due to stress. I added some salt to help with the stress. Left him for a day and did a water change where I half dosed ick med. After that I did another water change and dosed API general cure to start to de worm him. During that time I started to fed him. He refused the flakes so I had to buy him omega one cichlid pellets, and he ate those. After he ate he started to hit himself on the bottom of the glass on his side. I was alarmed and researched that it was “flashing” and that it was fine if the cichlids did it sparingly. But my acara does it a lot after eating, and only when he eats. I haven’t seen him do it any other time that I’ve seen. Is something wrong? My first guess is gill fluke but I’m not sure.
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Sorry the pictures are low quality. The lighting in that tank sucks. Plus I’m trying to get some otos to eat alage wafers so they stay in the water for sometime. I’ll siphon that later.
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Nitrate: Very Few
Nitrite: 0
Ph: 7.5
KH: 80
GH: About 180

The fish is pale and stressed out because there is nothing on the bottom of the quarantine tank. If you put a thin layer of sand or gravel over the base, the fish will feel more secure.

Same deal with the back of the tank. Add a picture or something to cover the back so the fish feels less stressed.

Add a couple of plastic plants and a cave for it to hide in.

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Using half dose ich medication for a day and then water changing it out before adding a different medication is not going to help anything except bacteria and protozoa develop a resistance to the medication.

You should only use medications if the fish actually has a disease.

API General Cure contains Metronidazole, which is an antibiotics developed for treating people. It also contains Praziquantel that is used to treat tapeworm and gill flukes in fish. It treats tapeworm in animals (like cats & dogs) too.

I have no issues using Praziquantel but it should be used on its own to treat tapeworm and gill flukes. Metronidazole will usually wipe out filter bacteria and if used incorrectly can lead to drug resistant bacteria that can kill people, animals, birds and fish.

Deworming all new fish is fine and should be done while they are in quarantine. You treat them once a week for 3 weeks to make sure any worm/ fluke eggs have hatched and the worms/ flukes are dead.

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If you post a short 20 second video of the fish doing its thing I can look at that. But if the fish is showing off to its reflection on the bottom glass, then it is probably a territorial display that will stop when you cover the bottom with some substrate.

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Your test results do not include ammonia. This should be checked too as it kills more fish than nitrite or nitrate.

Happy New Years Colin. Yeah half dosing ick med doesn’t seem to do any good I’ll stop that. As for the tank I’ve been told that QT should be bare bottom for easier cleaning uneaten food and to check the fish’s poop. I don’t have any substrate on me now. But I do have a background and plastic plants in the tank. I will add a ship hid into his tank too. Sorry I forgot to add that there is no ammonia. I’ll try to get him to do it in video. Do I send the video the same way I sent the pictures? I am using Mobile by the way. Thanks.

I recommend putting videos on youtube and then copying the link here. We can view the video at youtube.

As a general rule quarantine tanks should have as little stuff in as possible, and that includes substrate. But I prefer a thin layer of something over the base to make the fish more comfortable.

Here it is. He starts doing it early in the video.

It's rubbing the same spot so it might be a bit of food or something that is stuck and the fish is trying to remove it.

Does it always rub the same part of its body?

Are there any marks, dots or funny looking colours on that part of the fish?

Yes it always rubs itself on it's right side. As for marks I don't see anything funny looking. His sides look normal. This is after I fed him some pellets.

He does follow his reflection a lot. Could it be that he thinks his reflection is another fish that he is defending territory from?

The video footage shows the fish with an irritation on the side of its mouth. It is not territorial.

See if the fish does it after eating other types of food. It might just be dry food or pellets. Try frozen and live foods and see what happens. If it continues with any type of food the fish might have a deformed jaw and eating irritates it. Or the fish has OCD and rubs after eating.

I never treat new fish for illness or parasites unless there's some evidence to suggest that it is warranted.
I don't think you should ever add salt to a tank for stress. It's just not necessary or effective. (Although salt may be used sometimes with elevated temps for ich).
From the video, it's hard to tell if it's irritation or reflection aggression. You say it's only after feeding pellets?....maybe the pellet size is not right?
I'd suggest withholding food for a couple of days and monitor, then try the flake food again (assuming it's a high quality flake food).

Footnote: You didn't show a test result for ammonia. Can we assume this QT tank was/is fully cycled?

He doesn’t eat flakes but I did feed him freezed dried blood worms and shrimp and he eat them without doing this. I believe he started doing this when I first fed him the pellets.

Yeah I was under the assumption that treating fish with meds could catch illness before they show signs and kill it early. Now I know that this is the opposite and makes matters worse. And yes this started when he first ate the pellets. The pellets are the small size so he shouldn’t have a problem eating them. And yes the QT should be cycled I had it running for a week with media from my established show tank.

Ozzie Boss said:

Yeah I was under the assumption that treating fish with meds could catch illness before they show signs and kill it early.

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There are hobbyists and LFS that treat fish, especially imported fish, regardless of any symptoms. I guess they have their reasons, but I don't take medicine (drugs) for illnesses I don't have and see no reason to treat fish with unnecessary medicines either.

Ozzie Boss said:

The pellets are the small size so he shouldn’t have a problem eating them.

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I'm still suspicious if he only demonstrates the behavior after feeding those pellets. I think I'd switch foods. ("Hey doc, it hurts when I go like this"..."then don't go like that!".)

Ozzie Boss said:

And yes the QT should be cycled I had it running for a week with media from my established show tank.

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I'd still test for ammonia just to be sure...even with media from your established tank, If it ran for a week without a source of ammonia, the BB may have starved out. (just a matter of checking all the boxes.)

Yeah it may be only an issue this particular fish has. Judging by the fact that my juvenile angelfish are destroying these pellets with their little mouths. I’ll hold off on food for 2 days and soak the flakes in garlic and see if he eats them. Likely not as he mouths the food and spits it out. The blood worms and shrimp he does eat but those should not be his primary staple food. If he doesn’t eat the flakes maybe crushing the pellet kinda like how I do to my Cory shrimp wafers may work? As for the BB every 2 days I add fish food while the tank is cycling. Plus I added some fertilizer and left the light on to grow some algae in advance for the oto’s that I also have in the QT with the Acara. But I’ll test it anyway.

Here is a quick update. He started doing it even when I didn’t fed him anything. He was more aggressive this time compared to the video. He stirred up uneaten food. It’s the same side that he does it on. Idk what is causing it. He poops normal. He doesn’t have ick. He swims actively and doesn’t sit in the corner. He is not breathing heavily, and is actively eating. His side looks fine nothing growing or funny looking. If anyone has any clue tell me.