I have a 55 gallon tank that right now houses my fire eel, 6 discus, and 3 clown loaches . . .It also had a really bad algae problem, so I took out the carbon in the filter and put in some algae killing chemicals. Ever since then, the fire eel has been going down hill. The discus and the clown loaches are totally fine . . .not showing signs of stress or anything . . .but the fire eel is not coming out of hiding rock to eat, and has labored breathing. I put the carbon back in the filter, and did a 1/3 water change . . .is there anything else I can do to try to coax the guy back to health?
Fire Eel 911 !!!!
- Thread starter AmputatedBrain
- Start date
Fish are all fairly young . . .Discus are maybe 3 inches across each, clown loaches 2 inches long each, and the fire eel itself about 4.5-5 inches long. Had them all for the better part of a year now, and this is the first problem I've ever had with any of them. Active ingredients in the anti-algae stuff are: Diuron (3,4 - dichloropheynyl, 1-dimethylurea, Copper sulfate pentahydrate.
With the copper content in it, any scaleless fish is easily stressed out by it. You should not resort to chemicals to destroy the algae, inverts and anything else for you. Many of these chemicals including Algaefix have negative records already for killing several fish. Algae killing chemicals are history. What are your water parameters right now?
That copper is a problem. I will never use anything with copper in it. Hopefully the carbon will remove it in time. For the future, dont use algae killing chemicals, scrub it out.
Thanks for the advice . . . I think I might have dodged the bullet this time . . .it's been about 6 hours or so since I added carbon and changed the water, and he's already swimming around a bit more.
Word of advice, never ever use any copper containing products with scaleless fish such as spiny eels.