Listless Fish

[lizjamie]

Right after my bad experience with my 2 previous fish I am starting to panic again with my new one.

I did a fishless cycle, then a 100% water change and got my new fish.

Problem is that my tank seemed to decycle in this time, I left 2 days between the water change and getting the fish and I think all the bacteria must have died...

I have 1 1inch oranda in my tank for almost 2 weeks now. It is 58 litres with a Fluval 2 filter and the rena little one that came with the tank. The ammonia is at 0.25 nitrite 0 and nitrate 0. (So much for all my hard work)

My little fish is still eating and he is not hiding under the filter or anything but he seems pretty listless compared to last week. He also has some moments of almost uncontrolable twitching, but there is no sign of ick and i have been aiming for 3 teaspoons of salt in the tank.

Am I just being paranoid or is he affected by the water quality issues? And how often is it best to do water changes, I ended up doing almost daily ones with the last pair and wasnt sure if the stress helped thier bad end....

Sorry for the neurosis I just dont want to mess up again....

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The ammonia is most likely what is making the fish ill, you should do a 20-30% water change whenever you see ammonia in the tank (or nitrites for that matter), the tank is most likely cycling again because you left it too long with no ammonia to live off before getting fish- ideally you should have got the new fish the day you did the water change as it can take just hours for the bacteria to completely die off with no ammonia source.
As long as you deal with the ammonia and get it back to 0, salt should not be nesarsary (if you do use salt you should make sure it is proper aquarium salt and not just ordinary table salt or anything) .

 

[lizjamie]

Thanks for your reply.

I have come to the conclusion that the increase in ammonia was due to a bit of overfeeding whilst I was away overnight.

Since a quick water change, the ammonia is staying at 0, as is the nitrite, so maybe i do have a little bacteria left? But the nitrates have not increased at all, and all the parameters have been at 0 for 2 days now.

Is my little fish too small to set the tank cycling? (1 inch of fish in 58 litres) How long does a with fish cycle normally take?