jet powered tetras

redbucket

redbucket

AC Members
Dec 1, 2004
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my glow light tetras have gone insane. i have a school of 6 in a 10 gallon tank (only fish in the tank). they have begun a new and rather odd behavior today: the entire school swims at a pretty fast speed right above the bubble rock, which sends them shooting to the surface of the water. they regroup on the other side of the tank, then do it again. they've been doing this pretty consistantly for about two hours. ammonia is ~0, ph is high but stable. nitrites were high earlier today so i did a 20% water change. I don't keep any LSD around the house or anything, but could some sort of contaminant be responsible for thier thrill seeking behavior? i've had the tetras for over a month and they have never been this exciting, but it's rather worrying.

thanks!
 
They tend to do this sort of thing when ammonia or nitrites are high. Any idea why the nitrites were high earlier? Anyway, do daily water changes if you need to keep the nitrites down. Watch the levels, etc... They should settle once the water parameters are right... Mind you some fish do this now and then even when the water parameters are fine...
 
i know why the nitrites were up: unfortunately i'm doing a fishy cycle. i didn't know better when i started. it is odd, though, for almost a month my nitrites stayed at 0 or only a bit above 0 with daily water changes. the past week it's been skyrocketing. also, nitrAtes have been above 0 (not real high, between 10 and 25 on my little color chart, which is in the "safe" range). how is that possible when i have no plants?
 
I tend to do fishy cycles. You just need to keep up the water changes til it settles down. The behaviour of the fish is a good indicator of when things are not right with the water. And if you keep checking the parameters you will keep on top of it... It's worth it eventually and once the tank settles you can go down to weekly water changes. I had nitrites up around 5ppm recently in the tap water and didn't realize it when changing the water and the tank nitrites kept going up... Took me a couple of water changes to figure out the tap water had gone bad - duh... Lost a couple of the glowlights and neons over that, but the rest survived luckily...
 
I tend to do fishy cycles. You just need to keep up the water changes til it settles down. The behaviour of the fish is a good indicator of when things are not right with the water. And if you keep checking the parameters you will keep on top of it... It's worth it eventually and once the tank settles you can go down to weekly water changes. I had nitrites up around 5ppm recently in the tap water and didn't realize it when changing the water and the tank nitrites kept going up... Took me a couple of water changes to figure out the tap water had gone bad - duh... Lost a couple of the glowlights and neons over that, but the rest survived luckily...
 
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