Help

I need alittle help, my male swordtail seems to be gasping for air, but there are no other signs of illness???

Hiya

Best to run some water stat tests, just incase there's a problem there. If he's in your newly stocked tank, was the filter cycled first?

But water stats would be helpful :D

I had my concerns before that your tank wasnt cycled enough for fish. Do you know anyone who has a tank or have you another tank? You need to get some mature filter media in to the filter with your existing media ASAP to solve this issue. Yes! it could be anything but I'm 99% convinced that its the cycling issue if the tank was set up completely from fresh.

The tank was fully cycled for 1 week as stated. Water test are fine to. Although when i got him the fish shop put him in the same bag as neons, loach and another sword. he was bitten by somthing along the way, so i think that could well be the problem.

Should i do a water change.

What happens if my tank is not cycled after the full week, the water is abit murcy although was crystal when i added fish.

The male sword has now died, all other fish seem fine

Hiya

Generally a fish that is seen apparently gasping can be a sign of bad water i.e. nitrItes or ammonia. So thats why i asked about the stats :D

Probably me being dumb and not reading things, but when you say fully cycled for a week, is that how long the filter has been running in the tank? If so, and it wasn't a cloned filter, then the filter wouldn't have been cycled. If thats the case, then adding a stock of fish at this stage will cause a big ammonia spike which will start the filter cycle. The ammonia levels, if not corrected, will remain for a week or so and then there will be a nitrIte spike for longer.

The answer will allow us to best advise what to do :D

OMG the place where i bought the tank said cycle for a week, and they add a few fish. The filter is new as it the heater and tank. All logs were boiled

its very common for some shops to say fill the tank up and on 7th day add fish. They dont take in to consideration that each tank is different in the cycle process. If you take 2 tanks that are identical, one will cycle before the other, never at the same time. Some shops are sadly a little uneducated in this issue. Some are still stuck in the 1960s as well and quote from a book published in the 1950s which makes their knowledge very outdated. It depends where you shop, all shops are different.

Should i do a water change

Hmmm, I dont know why shops do this? Well I do really, to get bigger profits unfortunately:( The reason the method they told you to do wont actually do anything is that for a filter to cycle it needs food. The food is supplied in the form of Pure bottled ammonia for fishless cycling, and from fish waste and uneaten food in a stocked tank. Hence running an empty tank actually does nothing.

You have a number of options open to you, some require more work than others though.

1) If you have another tank running with a mature filter or know someone who does, the simplest thing would be to take about half the filter media out and put it in the new filter. You will need to be doing 25% water changes every 3/4 days until the bacteria colonise the rest of the filter media.

2) Take all the fish back to the LFS and do a fishless cycle. This takes anywhere from 6-12 weeks. (There will be a pinned topic coming soon)

3) If you do neither 1 or 2, then its going to hard work. You're going to have to do big water changes every 3/4 days for quite a few weeks.

Which ever method you use, its important to monitor the Ammonia and nitrItes particularly if the fish are still in there. There is a product which I have personally used to cycle a tank called Seachem Stability. If your only option is to keep the fish, then this may help speed the process up, but water changes will still be needed.

Like I said, if you can get some mature filter media this will really help your fish.

P.s. cant get on msn at the mo:(

Ive now done a water change