New tank....fish rubbing on objects

[Elisabeth83]

I've noticed my guppies and corys have been rubbing on the sand lately..and was wondering does it mean it's ick...or could it be something to do with the water quality? eg ammonia etc?

 

[dave80]

hi. poisoning water i think

 

[Bignose]

There are a lot of reasons this could be happening. The early stages of ick is certainly a possibility. You can and should be testing for ammonia frequently if your tank is not cycled yet. But, a lot of poisoning is accompanied by fish gasping at the surface, and listless behavior.

In my experience, at lot of scratching and flashing, without any white spots or other external indicators, has been indicative of gill flukes. Every fish I get from one of my LFSs seems to come home and begin scratching, and the fluke medicine stops it right away.

But, you need to have your water tested or buy a test kit yourself and make sure the tank is cycled before you begin medicating or anything else. The process of cycling with fish is stressful enough for the fish, you do not want to begin dumping chemicals in there too until you are very, very sure of what you are treating.

 

[Elisabeth83]

I read up about the rubbing and everything points to high ammonia.

The tank has been set up for a little over a week...but I've used filter media from my established tank, 3-4 cups of gravel from my established tank and some cycle stuff.

I wrote a post last week about this and was advised it would ok to add a small amount fish to the tank since it had a lot of stuff from my already established tank. The fish were from my 26 gallon tank since it was over-stocked.

I did a 30% water change this morning after I wrote this post and there hasn't been anymore rubbing since then..so I am just gonna continue the water changes and keep my eye on them. I can't see anything on them so I really just believe it's the ammonia.

I also took out 4 female guppies from the tank today and took 3 of them to my lfs. I'm just going to keep one pretty female in one of my other tanks and only keep males in this tank..as I am so tired of all the fry!!