Help me lower my ammonia levels

[Cassiopeia]

No unusual marks or discoloration. The fish looked perfectly normal. By swimming funny, I mean that the tetras are twitchy and having trouble swimming straight, they keep going sideways.

I have a bucket I bought only for fresh fish water.

I wash my hands with unscented antibacterial soap and hot water before and after touching anything fish tank related. It is in my bedroom, I will make sure to keep perfumes and deodorants away from the tank.

I will do a 75% water exchange right now. Should I move the fish into a separate container while I clean the tank gravel and exchange the water? Or will they be fine in the tank?

 

[Colin_T]

leave the fish in the tank.

Turn the tank heater off and remove the light or move it back so you can get into the tank.

If you don't have a gravel cleaner just drain 75% of the water out and replace it. Then the next time you are at the shop pick up a basic gravel cleaner and use that from then on.
The following link has a picture of a base model gravel cleaner (4th image down). Get something similar to this. you don't need a super deluxe model gravel cleaner, just a basic model like the one in the picture.
http://www.about-goldfish.com/aquarium-cleaning.html

I would not use anti-bacterial soap before working with the fish. Some of them leave a residue behind that can cause problems. You just want a plain old boring unscented soap without anything special.

 

[Cassiopeia]

Ok I will do that thank you.

 

[Cassiopeia]

I hope I can get this figured out before any more tetras die. Every one of the tetras is twitchy and and having trouble swimming straight. I wish I could post a video on here to show what I mean.

 

[Colin_T]

post it on youtube and put a link on here for the video

the water change should help, do water change first tho.

 

[Cassiopeia]

Did the water change. I will clean the gravel tomorrow when I get a gravel cleaner. Unless they have them at Wal-Mart I could pick it up tonight and do it. As much as I hate Wal-Mart at this point. Petco is already closed. Should I retest the water now or wait?

 

[Colin_T]

wait an hour before checking water

you can check the fish tho, see if they look happier

 

[Cassiopeia]

Hard to say if they are happier. They still can't swim quite right. I have a video I just took posting to youtube but I have a slow internet connection.

 

[Cassiopeia]

Ammonia is still 0.5. I must not have gotten enough water out. Should I do it again now, or wait until tomorrow?

 

[Cassiopeia]

 

[Colin_T]

wait until tomorrow, some test kits are hard to tell what the real reading is when its in the low level.

The swimming is pretty normal for a fish hovering in the water. The gills were a bit flared, that's to be expected considering the situation.

The fish in the clip looks like an albino black widow tetra and it has a white spot on its tail. Can you check to see it the white spot is still there and if it's raised or an airbubble? Check the other fish for white spots too. the spots can be anywhere on the body or fins.

If it is whitespot (ichthyopthirius), you will need some medication to treat whitespot. The water change today will certainly dilute the number of pathogens in the water and you can get some medication tomorrow to treat them with.
Before you go shopping in the morning, do another big water change 80-90%. This will dilute more of the unwanted things in the water. then zip out and get a gravel cleaner and medication if it's whitespot.

If you get medication for whitespot, make sure it is safe for catfish and scaleless fish so it doesn't kill yours.

 

[Byron]

I agree with Colin. Before rushing into medications though I would suggest observation for a few days. Water changes cannot hurt if the parameters (GH, pH and temp) are reasonably the same between tank water and added water. And avoid stress, which any medication or treatment will increase, so it can bee counter-productive. Allow fish the time to rebound on their own, they might be able to do so.

The ammonia seems to be occurring within the tank, as the source water tested zero. Do you have any live plants? They rapidly take up ammonia and would easily handle this level. Floating plants are the best for this, they are fast growing and easiest to care for.

 

[Cassiopeia]

I will be picking up some live plants and a gravel cleaner today and keep doing water changes. That fish from the video does still have a white spot on the tail fin and side fin as well but I see no white spots on the other fish. They all stopped floating around sideways after the last water change I did, so I could not get a video of it. Today they are swimming even better and seem to be stronger. Doing a water change now before I head out to the store.

 

[Cassiopeia]

This was the other video I took yesterday after the water change. Not the best quality but you can see a couple more of the tetras. Sometimes I see a sparkle that looks like a white spot, then they move and it disappears. Not sure if that means anything. I know they were dyed at some point. I don't really know what they are supposed to look like.

 

[NickAu]

Im most cases 99% to treat Ich all you need to do is raise the water temp to 31 deg c for a week and maybe some aquarium or kosher salt, do not use iodized salt.

Above 30 c ( 86f ) that the life cycle of Ich is interrupted and it starts dying.