Urgent Help Please

[julesboyd]

Hi,

We came back from holiday recently and our fish who were being looked after well had all discoloured, I turned the skimmer level right up and the fish seemed to get much better. However tonight within about half an hour the fish appear to be distressed and are going pale. Since writing this the fish have have gone back to normal the skimmer and all other equiment appear to be working as they should be, has anyone got any ideas.

Request Help

Tank size: 40 gallons
pH: 8.0
ammonia: 0
Phosphate : 0.03ppm
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 20ppm
kH: no test
gH: no test
tank temp: 75f

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):

Volume and Frequency of water changes: every two weeks 10 gallons

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: none

Tank inhabitants: Yellow tang, french angel, male and female clown fish, wrass, damsel fish, dragonette, about 8/9 hermit crabs, 4 turbo snails, one fire shrimp and one cleaner shrimp

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration): none only turbo snails and hermits about four weeks ago

Exposure to chemicals: none that we know of

Thank you for taking the time to look or respond to this post.

Regards

Jules

 

[WILDER]

Do an immediate water change with a gravel vac and add some new black carbon to the filter.
10 gallons once a fortnight is alot, I would do a weekly water change but less.

 

[julesboyd]

Do an immediate water change with a gravel vac and add some new black carbon to the filter.
10 gallons once a fortnight is alot, I would do a weekly water change but less.

I did a water change three days ago using a gravel vac and also cleaned all the pumps and filters. I also have a leather coral which appears to have changed colour slightly as well.

Do you think it's worthwhile me doing another change?

 

[WILDER]

Something in that tank if all the fish are stressed, I would remove that coral thing if its changed colour.
Do a water change and add some black carbon as something definately not right.

 

[WILDER]

Are they heavy breathing.
Anys signs of flicking and rubbing.
To be honest I think there something in the tank water.

 

[julesboyd]

Something in that tank if all the fish are stressed, I would remove that coral thing if its changed colour.
Do a water change and add some black carbon as something definately not right.

Many thanks for your help. I've taken the coral out and will change 5 gals and the carbon filters tomorrow. Should I aim to change 5 gals weekly?

It's only one fish at the moment that is not right, a clown fish. Its face was really pale and it tried to hide at first and then sat on the bottow for about 10 minutes, hardly moving. I thought that maybe the water didn't have enough oxygen in it so turned up the skimmer and used a small jet pump to aeriate the water. He's still not quite right but is now acting more normally and swimming in his normal corner which he stays in at night time.

When we came back from holiday, all the fish were pale and looked like they were on their way out. I immediately changed around 2 gals of water(all I had at the time) and they all appeared to go back to normal within an hour.

Many thanks for your advice.

 

[WILDER]

Say 4 gallons keep an eye on your stats to see if it's enough.
Good luck.

 

[julesboyd]

Thanks Wilder