What’s happens to my fish?

[Bertie07]

So I ordered some plants online and planted them in the tank yesterday, this morning I checked on my fish and some of them seem to have some problems, my archerfish has a cloudy eye, two of my mollys don’t seem to be doing well either, one has yellow along the top of his fins and they’ve all split. The other is losing his scales and has a white residue on him. What happend to them? Every one else seems to be fine for now at least.

 

[Coryloach]

I'd start doing large water changes immediately and add some active carbon. Where did you get your plants from? Some years back there was an issue with plants coming from the far east being sprayed with pesticides.

Also, test your water for ammonia and nitrite.

 

[Fat Homer]

Something else to possibly consider; when planting did you stir up a lot of sediment? Coz maybe that caused parameters such as ammonia to spike???

Eitherway, i agree with at the very least doing a water change to see if there is any improvement...

 

[esoxlucius]

If fish were fine prior to putting plants in then it's all pointing to the plants. Take them out straight away, then water changes to balance everything back up.

But as homersimpson said, if you have a thick layer of substrate and you stirred it up whilst planting them, you may have released some pockets of gas. That would certainly cause issues.

 

[Bertie07]

I'd start doing large water changes immediately and add some active carbon. Where did you get your plants from? Some years back there was an issue with plants coming from the far east being sprayed with pesticides.

Also, test your water for ammonia and nitrite.

Something else to possibly consider; when planting did you stir up a lot of sediment? Coz maybe that caused parameters such as ammonia to spike???

Eitherway, i agree with at the very least doing a water change to see if there is any improvement...

If fish were fine prior to putting plants in then it's all pointing to the plants. Take them out straight away, then water changes to balance everything back up.

But as homersimpson said, if you have a thick layer of substrate and you stirred it up whilst planting them, you may have released some pockets of gas. That would certainly cause issues.

I’ve done a 90% water change and will do another big water change on Tuesday, the fish were fine before the plants so it must be them and it might be pesticides on them. I’ve taken them out and ordered some antibiotics to treat the fish so hopefully they should get better. I tested the water and nitrites and ammonia are 0 so I don’t think it was stirring up the substrate. Thanks for the replies.

 

[Fat Homer]

Better luck next time and maybe try putting the plants through a quarantine period depending where they come from to try and prevent this happening again???

 

[Bertie07]

Better luck next time and maybe try putting the plants through a quarantine period depending where they come from to try and prevent this happening again???

Yeah definitely will, do you think I could put these ones back in after being soaked for a week or two

 

[Fat Homer]

Yeah definitely will, do you think I could put these ones back in after being soaked for a week or two

Having just gone through what you did, i would personally quarantine for min. 1-2 weeks, then maybe try placing some cheap dither fish in with the plants to see if there are any ill effects first before putting them back into the display tank...

Last thing you want is to have the problem sorted out just to repeat the whole process again...

I would also try and do a few water changes when quarantining the the plants to help remove as much of the nasty stuff as possible...