Rapid breathing all of a sudden and am I doing the right thing?

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S

Sonsinator

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 6, 2008
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where the corruption never ends
After 4 weeks of cycling the water and stuff I've finally bought another jar arowana yesterday. It is currently living in a 20 gal growout tank with 2 albino bichirs and some feeder guppies but I put in a divider for him to peacefully adjust to the parameters. It was fascinating because it immediately ate a mealworm in it's first hour but I noticed this morning that it is breathing rapidly.

I check the water parameters daily and ammonia is always zero but sometimes at .25ppm and nitrite is at 0 all the way and I do WC at 10% every other day. I'm thinking it got stressed all of a sudden so I put in another cover on the side of the tank (preferably black) to make him feel more secure and add in double dose of stress coat and remove all the feeder guppies as they may have contributed to the "stress". I don't need to put in water heater as I'm living in the Philippines anyway where the temperature here goes a wooping 35-36 degrees C.

Now, can anybody answer if the arowana is stressed or something else and if it is, am I doing the right thing?
 
Additional info: No signs of any arowana sickness observed. No gill curls and stuffs. He's the only one breathing rapidly while the 2 bichirs don't
 
@Strollo, yup 2 aerator pumps working on the tank. The tank is placed in our "rock garden" which is slightly directed to sunlight for better lighting and the temperature inside the house is somewhere around 30-34 when it is 35 degrees outside.
 
Looks like stress. You said finishes cycling the tank that makes me think do you even have a larger tank setup for this fish. Mu opinion is that it is stressed from having no room to move. A 20g Is way to small for a "grow out" and it being made smaller is a no no. What size is he and you should have 0 ammonia always so looks like the tank isn't cycled and that means you are already having a too much bioload. The ammonia will also stress the fish out. Best recommendations at this time I'd say return the arrow. Get a bigger tank and cycle it slowly and add the fish slowly not that much that fast.
 
Runitis, the ammonia sometimes goes up to .25ppm but immediately goes back to 0 and the 20 gal is a long type one, not the tall one many of you guys might be thinking.
 
@strollo22, yup I'll be checking him out until tomorrow and see if he gets better, but am I doing the right thing so far if it is?
 
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