Gasping

[Hevydevy]

Hi all - my first post and my first question as a new Aquarian!

I set up my tank about a month ago, got all the levels right, and a few weeks back added my first fish - two electic yellow cichlids and a ruby shark.

Everything went well, no problems, fish seemed to enjoy their surroundings etc.

Then yesterday I added four more fish including a few different types of cichlids (all only small at this stage - the electric blue is the biggest at about 2-3 inches) and a small catfish.

I came home last night after being out for a few hours and noticed two of my new fish were hanging out at the surface appearing to be breathing air.

Within a few hours six of my seven fish were doing it - all but the catfish.

I looked up the problem and it seems to be that they were "gasping" indicating low oxygen levels in the water.

Obviously I was worried but by then it was midnight and there wasn't much I could do until this morning.

Anyway, I woke up and checked them immediately. My two electirc yellows had returned to their rock caves with four fish still gasping near the top.

But my girlfriend, who gets up a few hours later than me, just told me that when she got up they'd all returned to the bottom and middle and were swimming around normally.

Obviously adding the new fish made a difference to the water yesterday and I must admit that I accidentally over-fed them yesterday too which ciuld have impacted.

I've since looked into it a bit and when I get home later today I'm going to clean the filter, change the water and add some conditioner. But hopefully they're still swimming normally by then too.

Any advice or tips?

[Slinky_Bass]

Hi hevydevy

(cool nic btw, good to have a fellow strapping young lad fan around)

But getting back to important things, namely your tank, I suspect it might be nitrite poisoning. Gasping at the surface, rapid gill movement and listlessness are some of the symptoms of Nitrite poisoning.

A sharp nitrite spike follows closely on the heels of the initial ammonia spike when you first cycle your tank. Could be possible that somehow your cycle got disrupted (powercuts etc) and is starting again? Also, how big is your tank, and with what sort of filtration? Could be you've stocked it too quickly and your tank/filter isn't handling it. Overfeeding, as you mentioned also really doesn't help.

So, to remedy the situation start with a large water change (making sure the water is conditioned), keep the tank well aerated, and feed your fish sparingly until your ammonia, n02 levels are stable.

Continue with frequent partial water changes (I do 20% weekly, some members do up to 75% weekly) to keep your levels good and to also prevent a build up of nitrates.

[Hevydevy]

Yes indeed, I'm a huge Devy fan. Have met him twice actually. Good guy.

Anyway thanks for the advice. I did a water change late last week but I'll do another one when I get home later today because, as you say, the extra fish may have thrown the levels out of whack.

Given how much I fed them yesterday I might even hold off on feeding them again until tomorrow.

[Sin]

dude...what kind of filter do you have ? cleaning it out will make it void of all the benificial bacteria that is there....and you will have no choice but to recycle the tank all over again...i believe what i would do is do partial water changes every week...a huge water change might not be best... also what did the water test results show? something is def. out of wack and a huge water change might not be the solution?

[Hevydevy]

Here's something weird and hopefully good.

Just got home half an hour ago to find that all the fish seem fine, swimming around and doing their thing. Some of them are playing, others just hanging around. But anyway, none of them are gasping which my g/f said they'd stopped doing by the time she left for work this morning.

Anyway, i just did a 20 percent water change, scrubbed the front of the tank, cleaned out a few dead leaves and added conditioner and some nitrifier.

But I've noticed that my red jewel, which was pink when i bought him, is now starting to get redder (which he's supposed to). Got to be a positive right?

About to test all my levels

[kimmers318]

Sounds like it could be your tank hit a mini cycle when you added 4 fish at once. A new tank is sometimes a little unstable depending on how you cycled it, and adding 4 fish increases the bioload all of a sudden, plus you admitted to overfeeding, may have caused some small spikes that were making them uncomfortable....since it appears to be turning around by itself the bacteria is probably working overtime trying to catch up to the new bioload and some of the levels are coming down, making the fish more comfortable.
Best of luck to you and welcome to the forum :)

[jeffs99dime]

i going to venture a guess and say your ammonia level is high.

[Lady Hobbs]

Adding more fish most likely caused an ammonia spike with is lethal to fish. You need do water testing periodically especially on new set-ups. Tanks are rather unstablable for a couple of months after adding fish as you haven't yet established a good bio-load for the amount of stock you've added.

Change out some of that water and get a Master Test Kit.

[Incredulous_Ed]

I think the gasping at the surface is also a sign of low oxygen level. what size is this tank?

[Hevydevy]

It's about 100 Litres.

It seems that there was a spike after I added the new fish.

I tested the levels last night and the Ammonia and Nitrite had risen.

Ammonia wasn't too bad but Nitrite levels are quite high.

I didn't test them the day before when the fish seemed more distressed but I can only assume the levels are falling again now because they've stopped gasping and seemed fine yesterday.

I do need to raise the pH a little though. Can anyone tell me how I do this?

[Hevydevy]

Well the nitrite levels have fallen from 2 to 0.5 and the fish are looking much healthier. Cheers guys.

[jeffs99dime]

that's good. nitrite still needs to be at 0 though--jeff