fish laying on gravel and breathing heavily

[cutechic]

i bought 2 pygmy catfish 3 days ago, and added them to my 5 gallon tank temporarily while i was lowering the pH of the tank they were supposed to go in. now both pygmys are lying in a sort of curled shape, laying not quite horizontally on the gravel. my 2 white clouds and my neon were swimming hyperactively and breathing heavily, but now they've gathered near the filter, where the catfish are laying. that sounded to me like there was not enough oxygen in the water, but i've got two plants in there as well. i've done a 15% water change and a 50% water change today but the fish aren't improving. the water parameters are:
pH 6.0 ppm
ammonia, nitrite, nitrate: 0 ppm
GH: 3 degrees dGH
KH: 4 degrees dKH

p.s. the pH level in the pet store was 6.4 ppm, but the ppl there said that a change in pH of less than 0.5 ppm would be ok for the fish.

 

[PJGuppies]

What type of filter do you have? is there air bubbles? you might add a air stone it might help..I am not a expert but someone may can help you better


have you treated your tap water? is there clorine(sp) in oyur tap water? you may get some stress coat to help with the stress of the fish

 

[cutechic]

i've got a wet/dry filter with a boiwheel that came with the tank. no airstones because i heard they werent good with plants, but the filter does produce some air bubbles along the surface of the water.

yes, my tap water has chlorine and chloramine, but i treated it with the same stuff i always use. i also added a half dosage of stress coat to help my fish.

update: 1 white cloud now moving fins rapidly but not swimming; slowly drifting backwards. is this shimmying?

 

[Dragonslair]

It always amazes me when I read fishkeepers reducing/increasing the Ph of the water. Why did you want to reduce the water's Ph? Remember reducing the Ph by more than .2 from their "normal" water that they were kept in will give then toxic shock. The symptoms you describe are classic of Toxic Shock Syndrome. You will be fortunate if they survive.

 

[cool_jool]

Hi sorry to hear of your problems. I have lost a couple of fish this last few weeks and it always hurts I hope yours survive. cool_jool

 

[val]

If you don't have any source of air besides the filter bubbles, I'd say you need to go out and buy an air bubbler like this . I'm sure there's one that will fit in your tank.

Valerie

 

[cutechic]

i thought i needed to reduce the pH because it was at 7.6 ppm, which is too high for pygmy catfish.

so, if i get an airstone it wont harm the plants?

what can i do to reduce the effects of toxic shock syndrome, or is there nothing i can do anymore? should i move the fish to a 5 gallon plastic bucket?

oh, i just thought of something. i took the carbon out of the filter cartridge so it wouldnt take out all the plant fertilizer. could the lack of carbon be why the pH levels are low?

 

[Dragonslair]

Do you know what the Ph levels at your lfs are? The fish should remain at the same level. Most textbooks give you a Ph level that is natural for the particular species. The thing to remember is, unless your fish have been imported from abroad the Ph level will be whatever the breeder has used. If it's a local breeder then the Ph will be similar to the local water area. Toxic shock syndrome unfortunately has no cure, and if it has been more than 24 hours, any attempt at reversal will end in the fish's death. As I wrote in another section, textbooks and guides are fine, but that is all they are...guides. There is no substitute for experience, and you are gaining a lot of it. Don't let this dishearten you. Just learn from it. Good luck for the future.

 

[cutechic]

i would guess that my lfs has around the same pH as me: 7.4 ppm. but thats just a guess. i'm going there tomorrow or tuesday, so i can find out then.

if i improve the water conditions will my fish get better? should i try to move them to water with a more neutral pH, or should i just leave them in the water with a pH of 6.0 ppm?

 

[bigfish]

i have cory catfish (albino, peppered and bandit) and they live quite happily in PH of 7.6. your water hardness sounds very low to me, are you should that you carried out the test correctly according instructions?

 

[cutechic]

yes, i did the test correctly. my lfs also tested the water and got the same readings.

one of my pygmy catfish has some fuzzy whitish stuff just over his right eye that appeared overnight. could this be a fungus?

 

[val]

That sounds like a fungus if it's fuzzy.

Valerie

 

[Dragonslair]

This is the problem that I was afraid you were going to say. Once you tamper with water quality and fish succumb to the rapid change in water chemistry, many types of complications follow. This will be just one of them. I'm not going to give you a sermon of the rights or wrongs. What I'm going to say is, you will need to shortly weigh up the cost effectiveness between treating the infected fish(es) or starting all over again. Fungal and bacterial infections are secondary infections, so the damage will have been done already. Some damage such as those to the gills cannot be seen by the naked eye. Gill damage is the hardest to treat and the treatment does not always prove successful. Unfortunately only you can decide what the next course of action you take is going to be.

 

[smb]

Do you know what the Ph levels at your lfs are? The fish should remain at the same level. Most textbooks give you a Ph level that is natural for the particular species. The thing to remember is, unless your fish have been imported from abroad the Ph level will be whatever the breeder has used. If it's a local breeder then the Ph will be similar to the local water area. Toxic shock syndrome unfortunately has no cure, and if it has been more than 24 hours, any attempt at reversal will end in the fish's death. As I wrote in another section, textbooks and guides are fine, but that is all they are...guides. There is no substitute for experience, and you are gaining a lot of it. Don't let this dishearten you. Just learn from it. Good luck for the future.

I can't even tell you how much I agree with that.


Unless they are wild caught or F1's, don't assume that because a page on the internet (that might be a great source and is probably right...for fish in the wild) says that a pH of 7.8 is what a certain fish lives in, that that's what the fish of the same breed you just bought likes.

Make the lfs check the parameters, if you have to, before buying it. If they won't, bring your own test kits in and check it. I've done that a million times. I just ask them to step aside and let me run a few tests.

It can't change more than .1 - .2 per every few days or you could have problems.

 

[cutechic]

so placing the fish in water 0.4 ppm different from what they are currently in is too big a pH difference?

i think it is a fungus because it is getting bigger and is now about a mm2. i don't know what to do. . . should i try to treat the fungus so my fish can live, or would that be cruel to make them live but suffer from the gill damage?

should i place the fungus-infected fish in my 5 gallon plastic bucket to quarantine him?