Help With My Fish!

[deanT]

hiya guys,

i have had 8 cardinal tetra in my 60l tank now all seemed fine i was watchin them bout half hour ago and 2 of them look fatter than normall 1 not much but the others belly looks really big and all he/she wants to do is hide and leave the rest of the group and be on its own i also noticed that her second side find on the left side is missin could it be gettin bullied by the group or is there something more i should be concerned about?

 

[rdd1952]

Fish going off on their own and hiding is generally a sign of problems. How long has the tank been set up? Have you tested the ammonia and nitrite? Could be a water quality issue but since the fish is bloated, it could be a sign of other problems.

 

[deanT]

its been set up for about 2 weeks now i had some filter media off a mate of mine they have shown no signs of anything iv been doin my normall water changes non excess of feeding then all of a sudden i have this problem

 

[cooldude]

Your tank has not cycled fully. Check for levels of ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. Daily water changes to keep these levels close to 0 would be required to keep the fish alive.

See how I cycled my tank:

http/aquarium-setup.blogspot.com/

 

[deanT]

just checked on here shes still hidein i cud see into her stomach looks lk loads of lil tiny bubbles or something not sure any ideas?

 

[rdd1952]

If the tank as only been set up for 2 weeks, I would agree that you probably have ammonia and nitrite problems. Do you have test kits to run tests? If not i would suggest good liquid kit to test or ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Stay away from strips.

For the time being, I would do daily waterchanges of 25 to 50 percent.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi RDD --

..think I remember Dean's first thread now, I think Athena was attempting to help.. It was a classic case of the LFS selling him a fish that shouldn't be introduced until months after the cycling and then not giving him any real info about cycling itself, so he ended up in a fish-in cycle with sensitive neons I'm afraid, with all the permanent damage and stress that implies.

Dean, can't remember from your first thread whether you were ever able to obtain a good liquid-reagent based test kit? This is one of the very first baseline things that can help a beginner prepare the filter for fish or help measure how the filter is working if fish are already in the tank, otherwise you are basically "flying blind." Even while looking into what might be able to be done for the fish showing obvious distress, its important to be taking action to remedy the basic water chemistry situation.

It could be that I've missed some important info in your threads though, so let us know where you stand on the water chemistry thing...

~~waterdrop~~