mouth rot or aggression?

[p0tluck]

okay i finally got her out of the tank did salt dip 30 seconds at 1 tblspn for a quart of aquarium water and she started gasping so i put her in a recovery bowl i managed to get a few okay pics , it looks like its bleeding, her lip i still there from what i can tell but it looks horrible, i want to change my gravel to something not so big that i can vacuum betterto see if that will bring the nitrates down but wouldnt that cycle the tank? or how would i go about doing it or should i be fine with the substrate i have now im at a loss i dont know what to do i did notice i do have some fish with split tails from nipping but thats never going to stop because i dont have schools cause of the people at the lfs as i've stated said i didnt need 5+ , i am 110% stocked ( well maybe not now since alof of deaths) as per aqadvisor but i dont know how accurate that is, they said with panda garras you want 4+ if i had that many they would starve. the good front pick i was able to get before i had to take her out of the bath is a bit blurry my apologies

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[Tifftastic]

Up close definitely doesn't look as bad as it did from afar. You might be able to get her to recover. They will gasp a bit in the salt, what you don't want is thrashing, if they start thrashing you want to take them out, dilute it and put them back in. But letting her recover in a smaller container of fresh water was really smart.

As far as changing the gravel it can cause a mini cycle as a good portion of the bacteria lives there. Its up to you if you want to do that. But it may help, you might just have a big chunk of something stuck in there that is decaying.. . .