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Lone fish gasping & can't swim.

jay

Member
Joined
22 Apr 2008
Messages
693
Location
Harrow, Middlesex
Hi all. Bad news for me. Whilst performing a water change yesterday, filters off, hose straight from tap into the tank, dechlorinator poured in as the tank is filling up. Same as every week for the past 2 years of fish keeping. As it was filling up I noticed that one of my male checkerboard cichlids was at the water surface gasping for air. Finished the waterchange and kept an eye on him. Over the next few hours he was not moving very much, except when caught in the current and he was unable to move with his own steam. Knocking into decor. I bagged him up and set ip a quarantine tank. Acclimatised him and hoped for the best. He sat on the bottom of the tank until this morning when I saw he had died. Any ideas?? It seemed like the new water durin waterchange had affected him swim bladder or somethi g to that effect. Anyone had this happen before?
 
Strange you mention that mate, the same happened to one of my chocolate gouramis last week the day after my water change. Looked perfectly fine apart from being glued to the top of the tank but not able to swim about and when it was caught in the flow just got flung about. There was no obvious symptoms of anything at all. Within about 2 hours it sadly passed away. I'm still clueless as to what happened but following that two more sadly passed the sane way too yet the rest are all fine. I even add my prime to the tank ten mins before filling to make sure the water has enough dechlorinator in before the hose goes in.
 
It seems a bit risky for me that you fill the tank with new water straight from the tap. The problem with water supplies is that it can't always be consistent. I have had a couple of times where the chlorine in the water was so much I could have sweared it was bleach coming through (exagerated, but you get the idea). Generally my water supply doesn't contain any nitrite but I have had times where the water contained some.

Also it is estimated that most dechlorinators take about 2 minutes to work.

Obviously the best is to prepare the water a day in advance, temperature, aerated to drive of chlorine, buffers etc.
 
I fully understand what you're saying Andre. Sure my London tap water is never constant in it's chemistry. Also, the idea of adding near half a tank of cold chlorinated water into a tank of wild Amazonian fish (green neons, checkerboards and ottos) use to give me some concern, but as I said, I've done it with the same fish for two years with no problems. my neons even seem to love the cold water. I do believe that it's perhaps a single fish maybe gulping some seriously oxygenated "neat" water as it's crashing into the aquarium... Maybe messes with it's swim bladder?
 
I've heard of that before about them taking in any large bubbles of oxygen etc. could be the culprit but at least you know it's nothing serious to worry about if your other fish are fine. I'm not do brave with adding cold straight to the tank though I use a mixer and run both hot and Cold into it
 
how much water did you change? it it was a large amount say 50% or more? if so then the sudden temperature drop could have caused the problem, i've seen it happen before when working in aquatic shops when to much water is changed and the auto fill comes in directly from the mains the temp can quickly drop, usually the fish recover but the shock could be enough to kill.
 
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