Emergency help for geophagus please!

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breakspirit

Candiru
MFK Member
Jan 23, 2009
184
1
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I got three geophagus altifrons today in the mail and I acclimated them to my aquarium water in a bucket for about 20 minutes and they all seemed fine. I put them in my 125 gallon well established tank and they were fine for about an hour. Now the big one is swimming sideways or laying around on the sand sideways and the other two are opening and closing their mouths constantly and also sometimes laying on the sand, albeit upright. All three have red on their eyes.

I did a water change today and all the other fish in the tank are fine. It was treated with prime for dechlorinating and the water parameters are fine.

I went ahead and triple dosed the prime a few minutes ago and now I'm stumped on what to do.

Any help is highly appreciated!
 
The big one no longer appears to be breathing and is apparently dead. The other two are still moving their mouths constantly.
 
One hour later, big fish is definitely dead and the other two are spending a lot of time sitting on the sand and breathing hard. Really need advice.
 
post your parameters ASAP.
 
If nobody is pretty much responding then that means they r stumped on your problem. It could be that they r wild caught and they have the worms in them... idk but i am assuming that the store did somethin
 
pics aren't going to help too much because the remaining two fish look healthy, they're just sitting on the sand and breathing a lot. Regarding parameters, the ammonia and nitrites are zero, the nitrates are some low value, towards the bottom of the measuring dip stick.

The big one just got flushed and the other two are still breathing hard, which has me worried. The temperature is currently 75 and rising. It's low because of the water change, but the fish were acclimated to the temperature before being put into the tank. That may have contributed though. =/

I wouldn't think that low temperature would cause them to breathe weird though, but who knows. Thanks for any additional help guys. I really want the two remaining ones to live.
 
What is your ph? How did you acclimate them?
 
My ph is pretty acidic, but I'm a believer that consistency is better than a specific ph. As far as acclimation, I had them in a bucket of half of their original water and half water from my aquarium for 20 minutes before adding them to the tank. As I said, they were fine for an hour or so before they started acting weird.
I got them from Tangled Up In Cichlids, so I'm confident that they are good specimens.
 
They're still acting exactly the same. I figure that if they're still alive in the morning, they'll probably be OK. I've just never seen a fish act like they're acting before. I'll update in the morning. If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks again.
 
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