Fish disease?

[badassissimo]

I recently have moved and unfortunately could not knock everything out with one trip. Hurricane Harvey did not help matters. I saw my fish eating hungrily before I started moving, the following weekend after I moved and even after I took two weeks to get back to them last Saturday to pick them up because flooding blocked roads and I did not want to drive while I hurricane could landfall. I drained their tanks and put them in 10 gallon tanks for transport. Them are the following tank mates:

1 feeder fish
2 female mollies
1 male molly
1 peppermint crocodile (Other one and a guppy were gone after two weeks... maybe ate or died)
1 tire track eel @ 9"

I haven't seen any problems. They get along fine except for the planned predation on molly breeding and the addition of feeder fish. Even now, I don't see problems with compatibility.

What I do see.... is I didn't feed them this morning and when I fed them just now... no one seems hungry.... the feeder fish has red gills, the male molly isn't chasing the females, and the eel that has the biggest appetite can't smell the mysis shrimp he loves?

The water feels cold... I use a thermostat power outlet and had it set. It was set on 28C so I went to 30C. The heaters don't feel very warm. I'm a little concerned but curious if maybe this is related to the temperature. I haven't noticed a change. I'm also curious if the water not getting changed for two weeks and the trailer not having cool air maybe caused ammonia problems or something. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[kno4te]

Likely poor water quality would be my guess. If not able to check then change out the water and add a conditioner to the tank size.

 

[badassissimo]

Indeed. I put them in brand new water and didn't think to test as of yet. I'm curious if the biocycle is beating them up and I'm looking for my box with my stress coat. It can't hurt to give them better water if that's the issue though. I'll begin planning for that tomorrow if I can. I'm preparing for another football game tonight.

 

[Drstrangelove]

What I do see.... is I didn't feed them this morning and when I fed them just now... no one seems hungry.... the feeder fish has red gills, the male molly isn't chasing the females, and the eel that has the biggest appetite can't smell the mysis shrimp he loves?

Sounds like ammonia.

The water feels cold... I use a thermostat power outlet and had it set. It was set on 28C so I went to 30C. The heaters don't feel very warm. I'm a little concerned but curious if maybe this is related to the temperature. I haven't noticed a change. I'm also curious if the water not getting changed for two weeks and the trailer not having cool air maybe caused ammonia problems or something. Anyone have any ideas?

Unless you have the flu or some type of nerve damage, if the water feels cold, it's cold. Healthy people don't detect 86 F (30 C) as cold.

And lack of cool air doesn't cause ammonia in a tank. Food and no BB causes ammonia. Is the tank cycled? I would test it before the game.

 

[badassissimo]

Alrighty... had a few things going on. I finally found time to change the water today and check water quality. I did the water change in the morning and thought everything was good. I checked the water quality and found the ph is about a 6.0. I added some feeder fish for the crocodile and he ate well. The remaining fish began to not swim. I'm thinking I need to raise the ph? I thought I had ph up and found that I don't... I have down from when I had hard water years ago. I am putting water conditioner in tap water. Is there something else I should look for? Ammonia and Nitrite are fine. The plants are doing their job. The smaller tank is going through hell too. I lost the algae eaters this afternoon. The smaller tank had some trash in the gravel. I'm going to quick ship some ph up to myself. I'm curious if I should get a test kit for other water qualities aside from chlorine, ammonia, ph, nitrite, and nitrate.

All help appreciated. My eel is eating very little. My mollies are eating like pigs.

 

[Richard203]

you should get ap master test kit, it come with everything. For upping the ph I used crushed coral I test my water ph every 2 week to see wheres the ph at. I used to have ph 6 too and the lfs told me to use crushed coral and worked.

 

[tarheel96]

What kind of test did you use to test pH? Was it a liquid kit or test strips?

Your post reads like you got the pH reading of 6 a few hours after the water change, is that right? Do you know what the pH was before the water change? How large was the water change?

Don't use the pH up just yet. Increasing pH by 1 unit increases toxic levels of ammonia by 10. Increase pH by 2 units, ammonia toxicity increases 100, and so on ...

At pH 6 and especially below 6, the bacteria which oxidize ammonia go into a dormant state. This doesn't really matter because at those low pH levels total ammonia is virtually all in the form of ammonium so it's not toxic. In this case, raising pH can creat a big problem because the nitrifying bacteria take time to awaken from dormancy and will not be able to deal with any ammonia which will be at toxic levels at the higher pH values.