Fish swimming odd

[Jax]

Hi,
I'd appreciate any ideas on what my fish have going on.
I don't have a test kit, have to pick one up in the am so that's no help.
The 4 fish are swimming at an odd angle, the way a penguin tetra swims but head down instead of up, 2 serpaes and 2 neons.
The tank has been reccently changed, 3 days ago 10%.
The filter has also been changed almost a week now.
I put in some sea salt and because I hoped it would help a capful of stress coat.
I have neons, serpaes, black phantoms, betta, gourami and a pleco.
10 gallon tank.
The serpaes were purchased on friday.
Any ideas? Proably not without test kit results hey?!?

Thanks for any and all suggestions!!
Jax



1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc)
2. A full description of the fishes symptoms.
3. How often you do water changes and how much.
4. Any chemicals and treatments you add to the water.
5. What tank mates are in the tank.
6. Tank size.
7. Finally Have you recently added any new fish?

 

[Jaded_Pulse]

Hi Jax, welcome to the boards

I'm sorry to hear your fishies aren't feeling too well. Just a few concerns.

1. How new the tank is - by the sound of it, your tank is still cycling, which is a process where good bacteria builds up in the tank to take care of ammonia & nitrite. Seeing as the tank is new, & the filter's been cleaned, these chemicals will be building up in the tank making the fish ill. There's a great article on this pinned in the beginner's section of this forum.

2. The amount of fishies in the tank - 10 gallons is a fairly small tank, & I'm just wondering how many of each kind of fish is in there? Tetras are shoaling fish, so they're usually happiest if they're kept in groups of 3-4 or more, but if you have that many fish in there, the tank is rather overstocked. Also, if that's a common pleco, it's going to outgrow that tank quite quickly - they can get massive.

3. The salt - salt is not a good thing to be using with plecos. As far as I know, they are relatively intolerant of it, & tetras don't much like it either.

Do a 20% water change immediately, & get those test kits ASAP. Monitor the levels very closely, & if they creep up too high, do a 10-15% water change to get it down a little. Do not get any more fish. Feed them very lightly over the next few weeks - feed them small amounts every second day & make sure you get out any food that's left over in there.

As for your fishies that are already sick - this could be a swim bladder problem, or just a generally not well thing. Either way, make fixing the water conditions your first priority, because this will help the sick ones out, & help prevent the others getting ill too.

Keep us updated, & hopefully someone more experienced will be able to tell you what to do from there. I hope this helped a bit - there are a lot of useful threads in the beginners section, so go check those out too.

Goodluck,
Michelle.

 

[The-Wolf]

i'm no expert but proberbly the sea salt is affecting them

 

[Incitic]

Sea salt isnt a good idea if you have neons, or any other tetra in that matter.

 

[Jax]

Thank you all for all the replies.
I didn't realize sea salt wouldn't be beneficial to the fish ... I have now found out that there are properites in the sea salt that aren't too helpful for them. I now have myself a box of aquarium salt.
I ran my tests, they weren't off the chart but they sure weren't good ... I have done more changes and put cycle in my tank and the levels are coming down. My fish are stil hanging in there, I'm really suprised I haven't had any losses yet. I just thought I would let everyone know what was happening in my tank.

Jax