Rainbowfish - pink gills are healthy gills?

Hi,

I will ask my question first. Are pink gills healthy gills, specifically on light colored rainbowfish? Or any fish for that matter? What if gills are red?

Here's the problem.

I recently upgraded tanks from 20 gal to 40 gal, moving existing plants and fish. I cycled the tank for more than two weeks with water, plants, few pieces of gravel from old stable tank, and a "cycling platy" who is still alive a well.

So probably too soon in the process I added 5 cute, young Pseudomugil furcatus, blue eyed forktail rainbows. 3 of 5 have now died. They all died very suddenly, with no indicators of sickness other than it looks like the gills are pretty red.

I also bought a single female Melanotaenia affinis (New Guinea rainbow) because it was alone at the store. It also seems to have pinkish gills and is flickering sometimes when swimming, but not always.

All other fish, a big SAE, rummynose tetras, 4 Cory's, 3 Oto's, 2 new angels, and platy are fine. PH is 7.0, ammonia 0, Nitrite did spike 2 weeks ago but is back to 0.

Thanks
Chris

self reply

Well since no one else did, I will answer my own question. And I guess these little rainbows are pretty rare since no one said anything.

I went back to my LFS to see if he had any more and check out the color of thier gills in person. The remaining fish also had the bright pink/red gills as mine (but more red than the picture below), so rule out gill problems as a symptom.

So from my observation and what LFS man told me, I'm going to guess that these are young and sensitive fish. And my tank is still in the final cycling stages, so I shouldn't have put young sensitive fish in yet. And like a good seller, he won't sell me anymore until my water is stable.

Unfortunately one of the remaining two was looking pretty bloated this morning, so I might be down to one left soon .

-cs