vmy@philabs.UUCP (Vivian Yu Ching) (04/18/85)
We have a 30 gal fish tank with 2 calico fans and 2 bubble-eye's. We have had the bubble-eye's for about 3 weeks now and the calico's about 6 weeks. Up until last week we were feeding them Tetrafin and live brine shrimp twice a day. We have since cut down to once a day. The bubble-eyes have been exhibiting the following symptoms since last week: - gulping for air - swim awkwardly after eating (sideways and upside down) - excretions are transparent and black, sometimes with air bubbles - spend a lot of time floating at the top side by side Our goldfish book indicates that they may have constipation, so we stopped feeding for 4 days straight and on the 5th day we fed them Tetrafin because our fish store was out of live brine shrimp. They immediately started showing the same symptoms again. The ph is around 7, we keep the temp. at 68 and I clean out the bottom of the tank once a week. What's wrong? Do bubble-eyes have to eat live food only? Thanx for any advice -
kathyv@daemon.UUCP (Kathy Vineyard) (05/03/85)
In article <303@philabs.UUCP> vmy@philabs.UUCP (Vivian Ching) writes: >The bubble-eyes have been exhibiting the following symptoms since last week: > >- gulping for air >- swim awkwardly after eating (sideways and upside down) >- excretions are transparent and black, sometimes with air bubbles >- spend a lot of time floating at the top side by side > >The ph is around 7, we keep the temp. at 68 and I clean out the bottom >of the tank once a week. > >What's wrong? >Do bubble-eyes have to eat live food only? I have a 35 gallon fresh-water tank, with various angels, etc. I don't seem to be having the same or similar problems as you, but I've had alot of sick fish and several die. After many trips to the local fish store, and hundreds of questions, I finally got some advice which seemed backwards to me at first, but makes sense when you think about it. I was cleaning the bottom of the tank once a week, thinking that the cleaner the better. This turned out to be a problem, I was cleaning it TOO much! Apparently, the ammonia level in the water is disturbed when vacuuming the rocks. Cleaning it once a week never let the ammonia balance in the tank level off to a satisfactory level, and it was actually making my fish sick instead of helping them. I don't have an ammonia tester for my tank, so I'm not real sure of how much the level was being disturbed. I do know that, once I stopped cleaning the tank, my fish were healthier! I'm now back to vacuuming once a month. It gets real dirty inbetween, but cleaning the filter, and changing about 1/4 of the water (without disturbing the bacteria in the rocks) once a week seems to help that. Kathyv