Fish Swimming Near Surface!

[apr1986]

I have a 65l litre tank with 5 platys 5 red tetra's 5 neon and 1 angel fish, i have had the tank for about 4 months now and recently i discovered white spot on some of the platys so i bought some medication and put the correct measure in my tank and now the platys seem to be off, not being there usual self they are also hanging around the surface quite alot what could this be a sign of i cant imagine they are struggling for oxygen we have lots of healthy live plants and the filter is rippling the surface. So what other things could it be?


Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Truck]

cant help with the whitespot, but the angel fish will out grow your tank!

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the site April86. Some ich treatments can damage the bacteria in your filter. If that has happened, you will be starting a new fish-in cycle of the filter. Another possibility that occurs to me is that when the ich treatment was finished, you may have changed the contents of your filter. If you did that, you are almost back to square one in terms of the nitrogen cycle. What a filter replacement does is get rid of all the nice rich bacterial colonies that were growing in the filter. Those bacteria are a key element in keeping the water chemistry as it should be. I would suggest that you measure the ammonia and nitrite levels in your tank water. If either one is over 0.25 ppm, a large water change is needed. If you do not have a water testing kit, you could start helping the fish by doing a 50% water change daily until you can get one. I know that sounds like a lot of new water but the fish will be healthier with fresh water than with water that is high in ammonia or nitrites. If you are in a fish-in cycle, with your heavy fish population, I would expect the tests to show a need for a change that large anyway.