My Angel fish are in distress

J

j_sinclair

AC Members
Mar 20, 2006
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Hi all, I was hoping someone could give me some help.

Yesterday (Sunday Oct. 22nd) I rescued two angel fish from a reletive who said he was finished with his tank and was "getting rid" of them and wanted to know if I wanted them since I had fish. So I decided to rescue them. I don't know anything about angels, but this morning (monday) my wife called me here at work and told me that they didn't look good.

She said that one is floating verticle (up and down) at the top of the tank, and the other is floating sidewise at the bottom of the tank. Both are flaping their fins real slow.

They appeared to be o.k. last night after I put them in the tank.

Here's what I know.

When I picked them up yesterday afternoon he had them in a five gallon bucket with what I would presume to be the water from the tank. They didn't look good then, but I tested their water's PH and ammonia, and the readings were PH - 7.4-7.6 adn amonia was in between .5 and 1 (1st and 2nd step). He's had the tank for quite sometime so I found that to be odd. I also took readings of my tank. The PH was between 7.8 and 8 and the ammonia was 0. I aclimated them for 1/2 hour of pouring a coffee cup full of my tank water every 5 minutes. I then took them out of the bucket with a net and put them into my tank. I had to remove my 3 spotted gourami because he started to attack them, so that may have caused them extra stress, but they seemed o.k. all night. By they way the are quite large (I think), their bodies are almost as big as my fist. They are orange black and white, they sort of look like gold fish colors, but they long flowing fins.

Like I said I don't know anything about angels so I don't know how to relieve the stress, also if it is a PH problem then I don't know how to fix that, and it's a 20 gallon tank, which I know is too small, but they came from a 15 gal octogonal tank, so I don't think it's the size of the tank that is stressing them.

I fear they are both done for, but I would still like to give them a fighting chance.

Thanks
 
it sounds like ots (old tank syndrome) to me, the change in water parameters has stressed them out... i would suggest turning off the lights and crossing your fingers, hope that they recover

i hope that someone els has a viable way to combat ots, but at this point i dont know what to do...
 
I was worried about that, and was going to try to aclimate them to my water longer and slower that 1/2 hour and a cup every 5 minutes, but I was afraid that if I left them in that bucket any longer than the next place I would put them was in the toilet. They were swiming sidewase in the bucket when I picked them up at his (my relatives) house.
 
my angelfish swim sideways when they cant find proper orientation, if the lights are out in the tank, and still on in the room, they will swim with thier top toward the lights... or if they are in too small a space they will swim sideways, so dont let that freak you out too much, just keep an eye on them and hope for the best!
 
angel fish don't always swim straight, it depends on the light source. I'd keep the water clean, leave the lights off, and feed them very sparingly. Angelfish can take a long time to adjust to new perameters, mine took two weeks to start eating after I brought them home. Also watch that they aren't being stressed by other tank occupants.

Also, Angels get really big--they will get a body size as big as the palm of a hand with really tall fins. I just right now had to move a angel out of a 38g where it was with two others, because it was too small for the three of them.

Good luck with your angels, they sound like they've been troopers to last so long!
 
also, just be sure to watch these guys closely as they may come down with cloudy eye or some other affliction due to the change in water. You might think that because the water is so much better, the fish would be... but the fact is the fish needs to be adjusted to the better water. In your case, it may have been better to get him started of course so you had no choice, just be sure to keep your eye out. As mentionex, keep the lights off for a few days to give them time to adjust to the environmental change.
 
i worry that the time spent in the bucket with such high ammonia and no or little aeration has affected them a lot, of course, that's after the pretty bad conditions they've been living in. i think all you can do is make sure they're getting lots of oxygen and keep your fingers crossed. good luck.
 
Thanks for all the replies everyone, but sadly by the time I got home from work today one wazs already dead. The second one was still floating vertical and getting pushed around by the current, so I turned off my filter. Later, when I checked on him (right after the Giants scored), he/she was floating normal at the bottom of the tank. I don't know if turning off the filter helped any, but I will give it overnight before I turn it back on. Well see how things go from here. But now I have a whole different issue in the tank....

see my new post .
 
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