Angelfish Breathing Heavily

[Noobie]

Both of my angelfish are breathing really heavy today. As in, they are pushing a ton of water through their gills. I did a large water change a couple of days ago and my canister filter stopped working. IDK what was wrong with it so I went out and purchased a Fluval 305 for my 42 gallon tank. This morning, I noticed the angels being really calm and breathing heavily. I put some Biozyme into the tank to help control the nitrites from the water change.

I just put some bloodworms into the tank for them to eat and they didn't even touch them. What should I do?

 

[chilledtim]

Ist course of action, A water test, to test the nitrates, Ph, hardness ect (5-1 test strips)

whats the temperature like aswell, is the airstone running as normal?

 

[WILDER]

Did you add the old sponges or squeeze the old mature sponges onto the new sponges.

 

[celaeno]

Ist course of action, A water test, to test the nitrates, Ph, hardness ect (5-1 test strips)

test strips are no good; use liquid test kits.

 

[Noobie]

I just went and had my water tested. Here are the stats:

Nitrate - 20
Nitrite - 0
Hardness - 300
Alk -180
Ph - 8.4

 

[WILDER]

Ammonia reading would of been good.
Check the gills to see if there red and inflamed or pale with excess mucas on them.
Have they bloated up in the tummy region.
Anys signs of flicking and rubbing.

 

[Jozlyn]

You need to get yourself a master test kit, so that you can test your water yourself.

You don't have a stat for amonia, need to know that one too.

When you changed the water did you add dechlorinator to it?

How long have you had your tank set up for? How long have the fish been in there? Do you have any other fish in there? If you do, are they ok?

 

[MHunt]

Unless you did transfer the mature media from your old to new filter, you are basically starting the cycle on your filter again like you did when you first set up the tank. If you did swap the sponges over then you would probably be ok.

Is it just me or is that pH quite high for angels also. I thought they liked certainly more neutral if not slightly acid water. I would suggest you get a master test kit of your own, so you can test your own water and make decisions on water treatment changes etc. All you really need to know is Ammonia, nitrIte nitrAte and pH. Water hardness can be an issue in the long term, but most fish will adapt to your water chemistry in time as long as there aren't too many pollutants in the water. When you get the test kit, do a test on some dechlorinated tap water and see what the baseline water quality you are adding to the tank.

 

[kribensis12]

8.4 ph is way too high. Put some bogwood in there and put some peatmoss behind the filter media as it helps. Also, it sounds like ph burn to me.

 

[Noobie]

8.4 ph is way too high. Put some bogwood in there and put some peatmoss behind the filter media as it helps. Also, it sounds like ph burn to me.

Is there anything else that I can do?

 

[MHunt]

Test your tap water. Make sure the water you're putting in there is not a high pH. But make sure it is dechlorinated first. The chlorine can make it seem to have a very high pH value out of the tap.

I have bogwood in my tank, and my pH is constantly about 6.5. In the short term you could do a water change and add something like pH down etc. But I would try and find a natural method of reducing the pH in the long term, as you will forever be treating your tapwater from now on to get the pH to an acceptible level. If you do use the pH additive, do it slowly. Perhaps 20% water change every other day with treated water till the tank reads at least neutral if not a bit lower. A sudden change in pH can be worse than the wrong pH, the change in water chemistry can kill the fish quicker than it living in the wrong pH. The other thing with pH is any ammonia in the tank is made less toxic at lower pH levels. At 8.4 a tiny amount of ammonia is enough to kill the fish, where at 6.5, more of the ammonia is trapped as ammonium which is relatively harmless to the fish.

Either way, you need to get the value closer to what your angels need. Have a look at fish databases on the web and see what they suggest as the correct water chemistry for angels and try and get yours closer to that.