Fish Opening And Closing Mouth Very Quickly

[cybortech]

Hello,

Over the past couple of days I see my tiger barbs and tinfoil barbs especially opening and closing there mouths very quickly. I can't say i have noticed it before (I may just be paronoid)

Does this seem normal?

Checked all my stas

Amm - 0
Nit - 0
Nitrate - 20
Ph - 6.6

The Ph does seem to change lowest I saw it was 6.4 and highest being 7.2 over 6mth period.

My LFS tried to sell me chemicals to alter the Ph and also some kind of gravel to maitain it, But I felt they were just after money and did not really help.


Had to use medicine for white spot after purchasing fish(contaminated my other fish) this seems to have cleared and I am doing 25-30% water changes every seven days

Any help on the mouth problem would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[iroc]

I can't help you but can tell you to repost or have a mod stick this in the emergency section

 

[ox5477]

do you have enough air movement in the tank, either with your filter spilling into the tank, or airstone creating surface disruption? this fast mouth movement could be an indication of them trying to move more water throught their gills to get more oxygen. do they spend alot of time at the surface?

 

[cybortech]

Hello

I do have air stones and the water ripples quite a bit. The yare not at the surface alot and still eating okay.

 

[andywg]

As mentioned in the emergency thread, you have too many fish with a high oxygen dependancy in too small a tank. Best short term thing would be to off load the balas and plec to another tank and look into a powerhead to point at the water's surface (or rasie the output of the internal filter above the water level).