fish rubbing against rocks/gravel...
- Thread starter tmy420
- Start date
It's called flashing and it is suggestive that the fish may have ich, flukes or other parasites. Reseach what external symptoms are shown, if none are, then internal parasites are probably the cause. There are some arcticles on ich in the article forum here at AC.
I dont see any white spots or any spots what so ever... they have been doing this from the beginning.. i put some aqua plus water conditioner w/ stress coat in when i do water changes... and it "maybe seems" like they do it more when i do water changes, i dont know for sure though... cory cats been doing it since I got them 3 months ago, just got giant danios 3 weeks ago and they have been doing it for a week, or less.. I have never tested anything with my water other then PH, im poor and cant afford lots of testing stuff but im soon to get uhm... any one else have any ideas? they dont really seem sick at all.. they eat a lot and are all energetic... A couple of the cory cats seem to stay at the top of the water for a couple of minutes sucking at the top of the water while all the other dont.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36783
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759
The second link is all about ich.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759
The second link is all about ich.
Do you have chlorine or Chloramines. The flashing is a sign of gill irritation, this is often due to parasites as mentioned, but can also be due to ammonia burn. Immediatly after a water change test for ammonia. If it shows up then you probably have chloramines. You will neeed to switch to Prime or amquel plus as a water conditioner.
Stress coat may also be the problem, but I never had any trouble with it. the aloe may be caoting the gills and causing irritation. I'd quit using it for now and see if that helps as well. Like said I never had trouble, but I also never used anything more than the bare minimum needed to neutralize chlorine. Don't be decieved by the label. Almost all water treatments claim to be effective for chloramines but only a couple really are. And your fish do not need moisturizers (aloe) added to their water. Dry skin is seldom a problem in a fish tank.
There does not have to be visible spots on your fish for parasites to be present in the tank. so once ammonia burn is eliminated as a possibility, and you know it's not your water conditioner causing the flashing. I'd go with the next most likely culprit which is Ich. Once you run a full coarse ich treatment (no shortcuts, no mishaps) then if the problem still exists I'd look for the more obscure possibilities like gill flukes. With the sole symptom being Flashing at this point there are a lot of possibilities.
HTH
Dave
Stress coat may also be the problem, but I never had any trouble with it. the aloe may be caoting the gills and causing irritation. I'd quit using it for now and see if that helps as well. Like said I never had trouble, but I also never used anything more than the bare minimum needed to neutralize chlorine. Don't be decieved by the label. Almost all water treatments claim to be effective for chloramines but only a couple really are. And your fish do not need moisturizers (aloe) added to their water. Dry skin is seldom a problem in a fish tank.
There does not have to be visible spots on your fish for parasites to be present in the tank. so once ammonia burn is eliminated as a possibility, and you know it's not your water conditioner causing the flashing. I'd go with the next most likely culprit which is Ich. Once you run a full coarse ich treatment (no shortcuts, no mishaps) then if the problem still exists I'd look for the more obscure possibilities like gill flukes. With the sole symptom being Flashing at this point there are a lot of possibilities.
HTH
Dave
Test kits for ammonia, nitrIte and nitrAte. Those are good starters. You can pick up a master test kit which should also have kh and gh (hardness and alkaninity) the last two are not as important for now, but will be as you learn(I still don't comprehend thier full efeects on water quality) The liquid tests are more accurate than the strips, and are relativly cheaper. I say relativly because they cost more per kit, but you will also get much more use out of the liquid kit. I have used the strips, and they work fine if that's all you can afford at the time, but generally they are not that accurate. There is no test kit for ich, parasites, etc. that I know of so you are stuck with learning thier symptoms.tmy420 said:
