New Beginnings

[drbronco69]

Hi everyone, My name is Mike and I am a "Newbie". When I was growing up, my parents had aquariums in the house. Well, now I have a son of my own and recently he wanted a fish. I got him a Betta and he loves it. Well...........I was jealous so I went out and purchased my own tank and set it all up. I monitored the water quality for a couple weeks to make sure that all was well. I purchased 5 Tiger Barbs and introduced them to the tank.

I do not think I have had this much fun observing anything since childhood. SO MUCH FUN! I love watching my Barbs. Over the past few weeks, they have shown my so many different sides of their personalities!

Tonight, I came home and when I went to the tank, they knew I was there for feeding time and sat right at the corner of the tank looking at me waiting for my to drop in the food. We went out to dinner afterwards and came home. NOW, I turned on the light and they are swimming like mad. They have been recently rubbing their sides on the larger rocks at the bottom of the tank. Their colors seem to be changing also from deep silver and orange and black to an almost dulled shiny coat. Possibly getting new scales? They are also swimming frantically while rubbing their bodies up agains the sides of the tank. Normally, they run in a pack together, but not tonight. I was a little worried, so I took a sample of the water to the pet store and all is well. Any insight on this behavior? Thanks for letting me share! - Mike

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

A lose of color is usually a sign of stress as is the rubbing. Have you checked the water stats lately? What size tank is it? When you first set the tank up (how long has it been set up?), if you didn't add an ammonia source to start establishing a beneficial bacteria colony, you would always get good water readings as it's basically tap water that's running through the filter.

Check you water and post your readings for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH and post back. I suspect that you have ammonia and nitrite present that is causing the problems.