Fish Breathing Heavily

[umpsfar]

As you can see my tank is well populated( a bit too much for my liking )
i have had the filter outtake water high up creating bubbles, to increase the airation in the tank.
as i noticed the rapid breathing on my angels.
Is this normal/ should i need to do this?
thanks..

p.s. has anyone looked into how much electricity, the heater, pump , light use up ?

145 litres
Blue Dwarf Gourami
Gourami - Pearl
3 Angels
2 Guppies
2 black tetra's
1 Cichlid apisto of some kind.
1 Bristlenose Catfish
1 African Clawed Frog

 

[waterdrop]

When in doubt, water change!

Correct water change technique is to use conditioner (dechlor/dechloram) and to roughly match the temperature of the new water to that of the tank by using your hand. Change at least 50% if you don't have a good testing kit to tell you your water stats. If for some reason this tank has not been receiving regular gravel-clean-water-changes for a long time then stop, report that here and ask for different advice.

You need to be checking your ammonia(NH3), nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3) levels with a good liquid-reagent-based test kit. Do you have one of those and if so which one?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[umpsfar]

thanks for your response waterdrop.

I'm using the API freshwater master test kit
ph is somehwhere 7.0 -7.8 ish.
Amonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0 to 0.5

ive been doing a 14.5% water change every week. heheheh (145 litre tank and two 5 litre bottles)
thats alot, but its white gravel and alot of dark poo.

I have not been matching the water temperature, i ve been using the two different conditioners individually( Gold, tap safe) (API stress coat) (and some british kingfisher brand)
Im presuming my mistake is thinking that stress coat is not the same as tap safe, as ive just seen on the net API do a tap safe too.

anyway, back to the subject, if i left the water fall and create bibbles they fish are ok,
if i leave it in the water, they seem to breath heavier over the space of 24 hours, kinda makes sense to me, no.?

 

[waterdrop]

You don't sound particularly overstocked for a 145L (perhaps about 35G of water) tank, but maybe I'm missing something...

And we're assuming a relatively normal shaped tank, not one with unusually small top surface area for any reason, right?

Surface area is the overwhelming determinant of oxygenation of the water -- If the surface water is moved, that is by far the biggest thing that will increase gas exchange betweent the water and the air. Bubbles turn out to not be a significant factor - one thinks they will be, looking at the supposedly large surface area increase of all the bubbles but it turns out that they travel so quickly and reach the atmosphere that they do not, in fact, add to the gas exchange significantly other than the extent to which their disturbance of the surface causes surface water movement, which -is- a significant factor.

~~waterdrop~~