Posted by Edith on April 24, 2002 at 19:28:33:
In Reply to: Huddling guppies posted by Al on April 24, 2002 at 18:58:28:
Hi:
While I haven't had this exact type of experience, I did experience something similar. I was using some liquid plant food in my tank and no sooner did I put it in, about a day or so later I have seen all my fish exhibiting nervousness, lack of vigorous swimming and lack of appetite. I keep some tetras in my tank as they are quite finicky and I use them to gauge my tank's condition. Well, these poor tetras were turning white. I did an immediate 3/4 water change and everything was back to normal in a week. I concluded that my fish were having not too good a reaction to the plant food in their water. A few months later I used a different kind of plant food and the same thing happened. This time the onset was more gradual and I didn't catch it in time, so I lost two tetras. I applied the same 3/4 water change immediately.
I would caution anyone to use chemicals in general in the tank, be they plant food or algae destroyer, or whatever. All too often the exact dose must be used but very few of us ever measure exactly how many gallons of water we put into our tanks. We just sort of say it's a 10 gal tank, so apply the dose accordingly. In reality however a 10 gal tank may only contain 8 gal of actual water. The remainder of the space being taken up by decorations and gravel. My tank only has 7.5 gal of actual water content, the rest being decorations, gravel and plants, as well as internal filtration. I would strongly recommend to anyone that if you don't know the exact amount of water in your tank, be sure to under-dose the chemicals used. In my case with the plant food, I only put in 1/10th the recommended dose the second time and my fish still reacted badly to it. Now I know the bottle says it won't harm fish, but if your water chemistry isn't in the normal range it may be a different story.
I would recommend the above measures for your friend, as in changing 50% of the water first and observe the fish for 3 days. If they return to normal behaviour, leave it at that and the next time the algae destroyer is used, reduce the dosage by half. The algae destroyer shouldn't be used again until all of the water has been changed from the tank in the normal course of maintenance. If the fish are not back to normal after 3 days, change another quarter of water, and the last quarter a week later. Your friend may lose some fish..... :(
Also, just as a note, your friend's tank is quite overpopulated. 30 guppies to a 10 gal tank is a lot. Try reducing the population by at least 10 fish.
If possible, have your friend invest into one or two algae eaters instead of using the chemical stuff. There are several on the market that do an excellent job of cleaning tanks. In my 10 gal tank I have two of them (the smaller variety).
Hope this helps... :)
PS: One other thing she may try is to add the therapeutic level of aquarium salt to the water and observe the fish...it may be that they are coming down with some illness with the symptoms not showing yet. Therapeutic level is 1 to 1 1/2 tsp of salt to a gal of water.
