Black Widow Tetra Help

[chef x]

hi I have 5 blackwidow tetras in a large tank,,bought them 4 days ago until now they seemed very happy and active..
only 1 of them is coming to a stop then starts tilting to its side then begins to float up ,and then it rights it self then swims normally... the others are fine . is it getting ill or is it a breeding thing... can anybody help please..

 

[ellena]

How big is the tank?
Are there any other fish in there?
How long has it been running?
Do you have kits to test for ammonia and nitrites?

 

[adammichael]

fish do that if you feed them too much flake food

 

[chef x]

fish do that if you feed them too much flake food

thankyou ,the fish seem fine now,too much flake food ,the greedy sod.

 

[chef x]

How big is the tank?
Are there any other fish in there?
How long has it been running?
Do you have kits to test for ammonia and nitrites?

the tank is 4ft 8in ,2.5ft high and depth is 1ft. other fish yes ,good community fish so told . neons,plati,guppies.
benn running about 2 week before fish added,do have test kit but does not test for ammonia...

 

[Honeythorn]

Ammonia is THE most important test to own. I suggest you get one at once. API do a well reccomended test kit, and the Nutrafin mini master kit is also good.

Ammonia and Nitrites are the main things you need to test for. If you only added fish two weeks ago and did not cycle your filter, then you are going through a fish in cycle. This can affect your fishes health as they are being exposed to high levels of their own waste in between water changes, while the filter is trying to grow enough bacteria to deal with that waste.

2 weeks is no long enough for a tank to fully cycle unless you set up the filter with mature media and fed it with ammonia for the two weeks it was running before you added your fish.

You may want to read this CLICK ME if you click on the highlighted areas stating fishless cycling and fish in cycling, they will link you to more in depth articles on what these are .

 

[chef x]

Ammonia is THE most important test to own. I suggest you get one at once. API do a well reccomended test kit, and the Nutrafin mini master kit is also good.

Ammonia and Nitrites are the main things you need to test for. If you only added fish two weeks ago and did not cycle your filter, then you are going through a fish in cycle. This can affect your fishes health as they are being exposed to high levels of their own waste in between water changes, while the filter is trying to grow enough bacteria to deal with that waste.

2 weeks is no long enough for a tank to fully cycle unless you set up the filter with mature media and fed it with ammonia for the two weeks it was running before you added your fish.

You may want to read this CLICK ME if you click on the highlighted areas stating fishless cycling and fish in cycling, they will link you to more in depth articles on what these are .

thankyou very helpful and interesting.. just one question if for say a fish tank 4ft with say 6 fish how long would the nitrogen cycle take to establish .. thanks again

Ammonia is THE most important test to own. I suggest you get one at once. API do a well reccomended test kit, and the Nutrafin mini master kit is also good.

Ammonia and Nitrites are the main things you need to test for. If you only added fish two weeks ago and did not cycle your filter, then you are going through a fish in cycle. This can affect your fishes health as they are being exposed to high levels of their own waste in between water changes, while the filter is trying to grow enough bacteria to deal with that waste.

2 weeks is no long enough for a tank to fully cycle unless you set up the filter with mature media and fed it with ammonia for the two weeks it was running before you added your fish.

You may want to read this CLICK ME if you click on the highlighted areas stating fishless cycling and fish in cycling, they will link you to more in depth articles on what these are .

thankyou very helpful and interesting.. just one question if for say a fish tank 4ft with say 6 fish how long would the nitrogen cycle take to establish .. thanks again

oops you have already ans. that one many thanks

 

[OldMan47]

The time is the same regardless of tank size or population. The bacteria involved can just about double their numbers each day and will grow to the size needed for a given biological load. If you have only one fish, the load is small but If you had 20 the wastes would be 20 times as much. Once you start doubling bacteria daily, that is only a very few extra days to reach the same stage of maturity in the colony. The biggest difference between a light load and a heavy load, for a fish-in cycle is the amount of work it takes to keep the water quality good while the cycle progresses. Lots of fish means daily very large water changes. A small fish load may mean only 25 or 30% every few days on a large tank. In both cases you need to remove the waste build up from the fish but if the tank is larger and the load is smaller, that level takes longer to reach a critical point.
In any cycle, the typical time is about 3 weeks plus or minus for the ammonia processors to get established and about that much added time for the nitrite processors to get established. The starting number of bacteria is quite variable so you can ad on a week or two for each kind of bacteria for a very pure water source and no bacteria introduced from outside. The numbers of bacteria found swimming free in water is very small so we all start with almost non-existent bacteria populations. If you can get mature media or even water squeezed from mature media into your tank, the cycle can sometimes be cut to a week or less.