Cory.. something wrong?

[fishwatcher]

I have a post in teh emergency section, but no one seems to be on there, so maybe it will get more attention here. I have a peppered cory that I'v eonly had 1 day. All of a sudden, he's floating at the surface, on his side when I turned the lights off. I thought he was dead, but when I went in to net him out, he swam away. He's done this three times! Is this normal? (At the moment I have a neon wiht Popeye that I just started treating.)
All my stats look good, except my ph has jumped from 6.4 to 7.2 in 3 days, with me doing nothing to make it do that. The only changes have been adding an airstone.


Any suggestions?

 

[yvez9]

that pH crash might have something to do with it.

if adding an airstone alone did this, you must have very very very soft water if co2 and o2 level can affact it that much with a single airstone, as they do very little...

did you do a waterchange or something recently? If not, try doing one right now.

By water stats i'm guessing you mean ammonia and nitrite are at a steady 0. Alot of other things can affect water quality, like phosphates. Did you check the level of those. Too high phosphates could bother fish, though it is unlikely.

 

[fishwatcher]

That's what I'm not sure of... what caused the ph to change. The only thing that has changed is me putting in a small airstone. According the test, my water hardness level is 75, soft. I don't know if it would change it more being a small 10-gal tank or not.
Do you think this is normal behavior for a cory cat? Or do you think something is wrong?

 

[yvez9]

any fish floating on it's side is not normal. It is a sign of illness as far as i know. Some fish act weird, but i have 10 cories and none act like that. Maybe he's having a swim bladder problem. Change 10% of the water every day for a week or so, see if he gets better

 

[fishwatcher]

I think it is ph shock, so I'm going to do the frequent water changes. thanks for your help!

 

[reg2k2]

If that's ur tank in ur av, measure pH just before lights-out, and first thing in the morn. Plants let off O2 during the day, but at night they only let off CO2...in soft water this can affect the pH.
Or rather, water w/ low KH, heavily planted, can encounter large swings...urs still at 20?

 

[fishwatcher]

The ph in the tank (a ten gal, in the avatar spot) is usually at 6.4-6.6 out of the tap. It's only been in the last 3 days that the pH has changed. It happens to also be the time when I added the airstone. According to another post I've been reading/posting on, this could cause the big swing since my water hardness is only 75. This morning I checked the ph before I did a water change and it was still at 7.4, same as last night when I realized something was wrong and did the tests. Even after I did a 30% change just a little while ago, it only brought it down to 7.0-7.2, not sure which as it's a color-matching test. Although I know big swings aren't good for the fish, I'm not sure how fast it should come down...? Don't know if it'd be better to do 20-30% changes once or twice a day, or just once big one and then small ones once a day...
This is going to sound stupid, but when the number gets higher in the pH, that does mean it's going up right? ) (Yes, I know, I know... I just want to make sure.)

 

[reg2k2]

Yes, higher pH, higher number.
It's the alkalinity (KH), not hardness (GH), that would allow the swing in pH.

Before the airstone, was the pH fluctuating? You've listed 6.4-6.8...is this a range on your test strip, or were you getting separate readings of 6.4 & 6.8?

Sometimes, the pH of tap water will rise if allowed to 'gas off'. Fill a glass w/ tap, let it sit overnight/a day, and test.

On water changes, I'm not sure, but it might be better to let it naturally return to where it was.

 

[fishwatcher]

The test strip has colors on it, and it's very close to 6.4 and 6.8 (those are the 2 numbers it has, no 6.6), so that's why I put both of them. I would actually say it's 6.6, if that's actually a valid number for it. so far over the last day or so since all this happened, the pH has seemingly stabilized to 6.8-7.0 (again, the color is so close it's hard to tell which it is, but it's the same color each time) after it jumped to 7.4. I'm hoping it's found a happy place and will stay there. I'm not adding the airstone back though just in case that caused any of it, since it was always stable at the 6.4-6.8 before. They'll just have to live without bubbles.
I actually am thinking that maybe the cory had swallowed actual bubbles (made from the airstone). Not air, which I know they do, but real bubbles. I say this because this morning he actually spit out tiny bubbles at the surface and since then has started swimming pretty good again. He did 3 or 4 times and each time he would swim closer to the bottom before coming back up and spitting out more bubbles. He's still not fully recovered
yet, but I think he's on his way. I made a post about this idea earlier but was told that cories don't do that (or at least the folks that posted said they'd never seen/heard of it happening). So I may very well be wrong. Who knows!?! I've heard of other fish doing this before so maybe when he went up to get air he sucked in a few bubbles instead and they didn't pop in his stomach. I know it sounds far-fetched, but maybe it's possible.
Anyway, I hope he finishes healing up or whatever it is he's doing. He sure is a cute little thing!