Fish sitting at the bottom of the Tank

[LucyJulia90]

Hi, I have got a new tank that was set up two weeks ago. The fish shop advised that it was okay to put a few fish in and have put three glowlight platy in they have been okay for the first week and we did the water tests which came back normal and a 10% water change last week. We have been feeding them every other day a small flake each as advised by the fish shop. However we went on holiday for 3 days (they were fed once while we were away), we returned yesterday and did another 10% water change which we have been doing weekly. However they all seem quite sad and two fish are sitting on the bottom and not moving much and the third fish swimming at the top near the filer and not moving much. When we did the water tests yesterday the nitrates showed as normal and the PH was 6 which we thought may be a bit low?

What should I do? Thanks in advance.

 

[Essjay]

What are the ammonia and nitrite readings? Nitrates are not nearly as important as the other two. In a newly setp up tank I would expect to see high ammonia by now, unless you did a fishless cycle with ammonia before getting the fish.
If the ammonia is anything higher that zero, you need to do a water change to get it down to zero, and a lot more than 10%. If you can't test for ammonia, I would change as much of the water as you can, leaving just enough water to cover the fish, then 50% daily water changes until you can test for ammonia.
Once you get the ammonia down, you need to test the water for ammonia and nitrite every day and do a water change if either of them are more than zero. Eventually they will stay at zero and that's when the tank will be cycled.
Live plants will also help as they use ammonia as plant fertiliser. Floating plants are the best for this. Getting some live plants will help immensely.


If the pH is 6, how hard is the water? As a rough guide, does your kettle or shower head fur up? You should be able to find a number for hardness somewhere on your water supplier's website - we need both the number and the unit as they could use any of half a dozen units (like gallons and litres for volume).
Your pH would suggest soft water, and if this is what you do have, I'm afraid platies are not the best fish. They need hard water not soft.



So what to do is -
bigger daily water changes
monitor ammonia and nitrite - and buy testers if you don't already have any
find out the hardness of your tap water from your water supplier's website

Once we know your ammonia & nitrite and hardness we'll be able to advise you better.

 

[LucyJulia90]

Thank you so much for your advice.

We have bought a testing kit that doesn't appear to have an ammonia test so will look to get one today.
When we tested the water yesterday the NO2 nitrite was 0.1 and the NO3 nitrate was 0.025.
We did a test for KH carbonate hardness and this showed up as 10 and on our water supplies website it says that it is very soft. I will do a larger water change now. We do have one live plant and three small live grasses in the tank since we set it up.

 

[giobelkoicenter]

That is just reaction if they don't see much people they shy away or if they are sick it is probably parasites in the gut

 

[Essjay]

Fish excrete ammonia so that is the first thing to show up in an uncycled tank. Ammonia burns the fish's skin and gills which makes it hard for them to absorb oxygen. So we grow a colony of bacteria which eat ammonia. In an uncycled tank there are very very few ammonia eating bacteria so we have to grow more of them and until there are enough ammonia builds up. Once they start to increase in number they eat the ammonia and turn it into nitrite until one day there are enough ammonia eaters to eat all the ammonia made by the fish.
But nitrite is also toxic to fish but we grow a second colony of bacteria to eat this nitriite. Again there are very very few nitrite eaters in an uncycled tank so they have to multiply as well. Because the ammonia eaters start first, the nitrite eaters always lag behind so after a few weeks you will reach a point where there are enough ammonia eaters so ammonia stays at zero but not enough nitrite eaters so you have to continue with water changes till that too stays at zero.
It takes a few weeks to grow all the bacteria a tank needs. Until then it is our job to keep ammonia and nitrite very low by doing water changes.


I assume you are using strip testers because they don't contain an ammonia tester, you have to buy that separately. Nitrite won't show up for couple of weeks after getting fish, so you might well see some soon - and your nitrite of 0.1 suggests you have some ammonia eaters making nitrite already. If you start doing daily water changes that should help reduce any ammonia in the water and will stop nitrite getting too high. Once you have testers for both, you need to do a water change whenever you see a reading above zero.


I'm afraid that if you have soft water platies will not do well as they need hard water. Is there any chance of returning them to the shop? Then continue cycling the tank with a bottle of ammonia before getting some soft water fish?