Urgent: Hyperventilating Kuhlis

My gut says they stand a better chance in the tank with the filter. A container with no filter, even a container of plants with no filter, gets yucky fast.
 
To the best of my knowledge Kuhli's are notoriously fragile fish, they don't travel well. If your girlfriend got them for you on the same day or even a couple days after they arrived at the pet store you could be dealing with normal kuhli shock as well. I'm sure none of the other factors are helping. Are the two that you had originally showing any signs of stress? The w/c, the chemistry, the moving from tank to tank, all may be stress factors.

I am sorry I have no more advice to add. I hope the rest of them make it through. I would continue on the recommended course of action.
 
it's definitely the ammonia; i can see that the two I originally had have damaged gilled (at least...I think; they're rather red and look slightly swollen, which I understand to be signs of ammonia burned gills). hopefully they'll pull through, options are limited at the moment.

:(
 
As mentioned by the others, if you do enough water changes you should be able to get your NH3 super low. Then, with no feedings happening it should stay pretty low for a while.

Only x-factor I see is the effect of the soil you mentioned. If you think your soil is releasing ammonia, you could consider removing it from your tank and putting it back when you return. Removing the soil will remove any beneficial bacteria on it, though, so there could be a negative effect as well....

Whatever state you leave things in -- try to get that ammonia % down as much as possible!
 
That's what I'm planning on doing. Removing all the soil isn't really an option either. I mean, it is...but it would be an immense amount of work that I just don't have the time for.

I'll keep changing the water and checking the levels. Hopefully having the filter on there will help
 
One more thing I can mention, just haven't dealt with it but once, long ago......when I received a discus shipment once, shipped poorly resulting in ammonia burn to the fins and discus laying flat on the substrate, it was recommended to me to add salt to the water to aid with their respiration. For sure lots of clean water to get those ammonia and nitrite levels down is the most important thing, but i'm wondering if a little salt added to their water would help them breath a little easier. In the case of my discus, although they looked like they would die, kept in the dark tank to rest with salt added, they were up off the bottom the next day, swimming. Anyone have any thoughts on this with the kuhli's with their gills having been a bit damaged right now? And I don't remember how much salt, it wasn't a huge amount.
 
I would think as long as its not excessive it would be ok. I'm pretty sure kuhli's fit into the scaleless class, do they not? They don't like much salt. Would be worth a further look.
 
I know I read that salt helps to keep the wounds from getting infected; I can't think of what it would do for respiration. In either case, several sites suggest adding salt (for the antibacterial effect) and an air stone (further oxygen in the water so the fish can still breath despite damaged and therefore less efficient gills). Already have airation going, I'll consider adding salt. thanks for the suggestion :)
 
sigh...this is frustrating

I'm stuck at about 0.25ppm ammonia. Tested before a WC, did what amounts to about a 200% WC, still at 0.25ppm. Tested tap water just to see and tap is reading 0 ppm

At a loss in terms of what to do besides go to bed and see what it looks like in the morning :shakehead:
 
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