Are They Being Bullied? Or Could It Be Just Stress?

[cjpf]

Hey guys.. So I have a 55 Gallon aquarium with 2 filters. An Aqueon 75 and a 30. I have 5 tiger barbs (fairly young) and 2 (older) albino tiger barbs, a rainbow shark, 3 mollies, 2 platies, 2 dwarf gouramies, 1 opaline gourami and 6 danios. I recently (4 days ago) introduced 3 colombian tetras to the tank.. However, now the opaline gourami stays in one place and one of the mollies has the tail split in two. One of the tetras has kind of a ragged dorsal fin. Can this be due to the stress of adding the new fish? or is it likely that they are being bullied by one of the other fish? I have been doing a lot of water changes (1 daily for a month now). the ammonia levels are at 0.10, nitrites at 0 and nitrates a little high between 40 and 80. Icant do much about the nitrates because the water from the tap comes with nitrate levels of around 25!!!! I have a lot of plants, though most are still small, in order to help control the nitrates.

 

[DJH584]

Your nitrates, according to advice I have seen here, are not that high. Up to 20ppm on top of your normal tap reading is, apparently, acceptable.
Given that the only change that has been made has been the columbian tetras, may I suggest that you put them in a hospital tank so that the fins can be repaired on the damaged one, and then get rid of them back to where you bought them from.

Hopefully the molly will get its fins repaired in situ (with medication) and the gourami will come out of its shell.

As a matter of interest, why did you purchase the tetra in the first place?

David

 

[cjpf]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I have read that below 40 is fine. I got a little worried when the test for nitrates came close to 80.. but there is not much i can do about it. I also don't want to start adding chemical to reduce the levels.

When i added the third gourami (one of the dwarf gouramies) they didn't get along too well.. even today still, they will chase each other if they come too close. Im thinking that the dwarf gourami is attacking the opaline, since one of the sensor things (I'm not familiar with the technical term) is shorter than the other one, as if it had been cut in half, but it could have also been another fish that did that to him.

I got the tetras because I wanted another fast swimming fish, and the size, shape and color (with the red tail) I thought it was good. I did some research and no one seemed to say it was bad to have those tetras with the fish I already had. I did hear that I should have a school of at least 5, but I don't want to overcrowd my tank and the LFS said that 3 would be an acceptable number.