Gas up - Let's Go! Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 Have you tested the water for Ammonia, NitrITE and nitrATE? for a siamese fighter you need Ammonia and Nitrite to be 0 and NitrATE to be less that 40, preferably around 20-30 or lower. sounds asif it may be stress related if he is placid on minute but tearing around the tank the next. what are you feeding him and have you changed anything else apart from the addition of females? I've not tested the water of late, I'll do it tonight, although to be honest I don't even think I've got an Ammonia test kit! Nitrite is defo at 0, unsure about Nitrate, again I'll have a check although I did a 1/4 water change yesterday and removed the carbon from the filter as I've put some medication in, the Domino Molly has a fungal infection, which is now clearing up. When I removed the carbon, I cleaned (in old aquarium water) 2 of the 4 foam filter pads and added in some new Biomax into the now empty trap (from the Carbon) the filter - it's an external Fluval 205 filter. The carbon will get replaced next week when the Molly is fuly recovered. All the other fish are fine, even Bruce, the red tipped Rainbow Shark, who is normally a right grumpy git, appears to be living in harmony...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wild foamy Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 it may just be the siamese fighter is being a tempermental little sh*t, as they quite often are , lol, even my goldfish have days where they mope around the plants, and some days they will not keep still. is the fighter fish still eating and deficating (didnt want to be quite as blunt as saying shi*ting) as usual? ideally it would have been best to quarantine the molly instead of treating the whole tank as the fish you mentioned are not as hardy as most coldwater specimins (where you can get away with dosing the whole tank). some fish will experiance side-effects to treatment, especially the less hardy varieties chances are if you've been cleaning the filters in old tank water and only doing half at a time (as you should) then any trace of ammonia would be gone, and because there is no Nitrite reading it will most certaintly have already established a nitrifying bacteria colony. common practice with any illness is to do a 50% water change and maybe up the weekly water changes from 15% to about 20% is a lot to take in, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ulster exile Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 What exactly is th problem with your betta? Seems like we've missed the start of the thread, or was it started in an unconnected topic? Save yourself some £££ and don't run the carbon filter pad unless you're trying to strip some meds from the water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gas up - Let's Go! Posted February 6, 2009 Author Share Posted February 6, 2009 What exactly is th problem with your betta? Seems like we've missed the start of the thread, or was it started in an unconnected topic? Save yourself some £££ and don't run the carbon filter pad unless you're trying to strip some meds from the water. The thread did start somewhere else, the only bit you've all missed is the bit where I asked Steve if he had any idea why Finley (yes she has given him a name!) is acting like a loon. The problem with the stupid bugger, he's very lethargic, not eating, just lying at the bottom of the tank playing dead. Every now and then he gets a spurt of energy, swims around the tank at full speed (which isn't normal for a start) then retires to the 'playing dead' part. Mostly he plays dead in the plants, but today he is just in the corner of the tank. So, Nitrite is 0, Nitrate was 50, put some 'Nitrateminus' in and its down to nearer 25 today. Ammonia is 0. PH and hardnes hasn't changed. The other fish are healthy, with the Domino Molly having made a full recovery (she did have some fin rot and a fungus infection) but there is still medication in the water. I'm kinda thinking that it's the medication that he doesn't like. I'm off to buy a small tank today and isolate him in fresh water, I'll keep an eye on the Nitrite levels, but these should be OK with just him in the tank. I always use Cycle as well as the Aquasafe so should be OK. The other option is to change one of the filter baskets and re-introduce some fresh carbon to clear out the medication (it's £8 a bag - rip off!). Got to go one way or the other. On the plus side he doesn't appear to be any the worse for his behaviour, but he's been like this for 4 days now so it I guess he will start to go down hill if we don't get to the bottom of the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wild foamy Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 put some activated carbon into your filter and get as much of the meds out as possible, if he is not eating then that is a bad sign, possible internal parasites but i doubt it. under the circumstances i dont think you really need to isolate him in another tank, i only tend to do that if another fish has finrot, parasites or something else which can be passed on to the other fish. put some activated carbon in these as soon as you can and check to see if he is improving Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gas up - Let's Go! Posted February 6, 2009 Author Share Posted February 6, 2009 OK, this is getting just a bit sad, but hey hoy! I took a video of him, and took it into the aquatic shop, the guy in there is sh1t hot, told him the story, he took one look and said - 'Old Age' !! apparently these thing only go 24 months, and the first 6-9 is before they make it to the shops. Now Finley was a 'rescue' fish, that is my wife went into the shop and purchased a fish that had mental problems (!) and had already had one owner, so by our reckoning he's probably about 2 - 2 1/2 years old now. The Medication may just have pushed him over the edge. The best bit, when these fish start to go, the female's like to help them along a bit (by eating him) so that they can get an nice new male ......... sounds familiar The Carbon is going in on Saturday to clear out the meds as the Molly is OK, so we might get a reprieve. Thanks for the advice anyway, you wouldn't guess we've been keeping fish for years we just never get problems, maybe because we keep up with the maintenance on the water and filters. We've got a bit to go before moving on to Marine Fish me thinks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ulster exile Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 Please tell me you don't have him in with a female normally? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gas up - Let's Go! Posted February 7, 2009 Author Share Posted February 7, 2009 Please tell me you don't have him in with a female normally? Two! Nowthen, I'm curious why you ask this, ???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ulster exile Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Males and females are extremely aggressive towards each other and really should only be kept together when they've been conditioned for spawning and added under close supervision (then removed once the dirty deed is done . Some people reckon in a big enough tank you can keep males and females together, but most experienced breeders wouldn't. Males tend to be kept in small (ie 5gallons +) tanks on their own or with some well chosen tankmates (mine was with ember tetras which are way too fast to be a target) and females are usually kept in "sororities" of say 5 and more. The females are usually kept in larger numbers for the same reasons as say tiger barbs are - they're known to be aggressive and larger numbers spread out the aggression. Only problem with buying females from a shop is that sometimes you get a cambodian or young male in there!!! This was my last boyo, just a mongrel Veil tail, who also had cherry shrimp for company (another companion open to debate as some go for them, but this one didn't bother as you can see!) What else do you keep it with? And is there strong flow in the tank as they hate that. I certainly agree that most shop bought betta's seem to be of weaker stock nowadays - we've been through a few in the past 3 years and the slighest thing does seem to get them. However, well bred and kept betta's can live to 4 years (I know of one person who had a betta for 5 years!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gas up - Let's Go! Posted February 8, 2009 Author Share Posted February 8, 2009 Well - We put the cabon into the filter saturday morning, by tea time he's up and about a bit more. So, I'm going to stick my neck out and point the finger of blame at the medication for the fin rot. We do have the two females as well as the male in the tank, and they've never been violent towards each other (apart from when he was 'sick' and they tried to eat him!) it's a fair sized tank (200 Litres) so there is plenty of space between them all. As for flow, the tank has 'zones' that we've created (using bogwood, rocks and vegitation as sort of break waters), so there is a strong flow diagonaly through the tank, a well airiated section and a very calm section with lots and lots of plants. He links the calm area, but we seen him 'playing' in the bubble columns at the other end of the tank quite often too. Most of the fish in that tank are quiet community fish, Neons, Harlequins, couple of guppies, swordtails as well as a Red tipped Rainbow Shark (who takes no sh1t from anyone!), some shrimps and th elast remaining Moly (or big fat cow as she's become known). We did have a loach but he was always figting with the shark, so the loach went to another home. The tank is under stocked when you do the sums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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