Fish are acting strange, any help is appreciated.

[pitlife79]

Hello everyone,

I have a few questions on puzzling behavior that my fish are experiencing. I recently brought in a frog fish and some corals that I traded for, and now after a few days of having everything in the tank my fish are all acting odd. I have a bi-color blenny, yellow tail damsel, Royal Gramma, and ocellaris clown. All of them are swimming irradically and scratch the rocks every now and again. They don't seem to scratch one specific spot on their body, and for the most part they swim as usual. I see the odd swimming a
lot more than I see the scratching. It is very strange. One minute they will swim just fine and the next minute they dart off in an almost frenzied state. They wiggle around and even do circles sometimes. This doesn't always lead to scratching, but they do scratch. Any idea's as to what this is? I haven't seen any white spots at all. There's no obvious signs of parasites or physical damage to the fish. The bicolor's black coloration is faded a bit, but no other signs of physical damage. The guy I got the coral from has had his system up for a while and he only had a Royal Gramma and some type of Small goby, but they had been in the tank for months before I got this stuff from him. I did purchase a frog fish from another friend recently and I keep it in the sump, but again, this person has had this fish for over a year and he was the only fish in the system. I did feed the frog fish some feeder goldfish recently, but I didn't think that it would be possible to transfer anything from these fish to the tank inhabitants because they only lasted about a minute. Any ideas?

 

[Jan]

What corals did you receive? I don't know anything about frogfish. Do they have any kind of toxin?

I would do a 20% water change, and if possible remove the new corals and put them in a QT tank, frogfish too...

 

[Herefishyfishy]

1. Goldfish are very bad as food, anything else is superior.
2. Until you find out whether the apparent problem is chemical or biological, best to do a water change and or add carbon.

 

[pitlife79]

Thanks,

I did a 10 gallon water change just the other day (40 gallon tank) And I just added new carbon to the canister filter that I run. I am going to set up a QT and move the fish. Does this sound like any typical disease?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Don't bother to QT at this late date. If it is biological, it's already in the tank. Take your time and see how they do with the new water and carbon. If anything, would add some vits. The less changes, the less stress.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Do you have any test kits? If so, what are your current parameters.

 

[pitlife79]

I do have test kits, I can't remember what they were last week, but I can test again and post them later. I would like to save the fish If i can. I was thinking of putting them into the QT and trying hyposalinity just in case they have parasites. So you recommend against this?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Moving stressed fish will not necessarily help them unless you first know the problem is parasitic and curable by hypo. Could be simple as high ammonia or toxins from the frogfish for all you know. Do the testing, watch the fish, and determine based on more info. Another 25% water change wouldn't be a bad thing, regardless of the cause for the fishes' discomforts.

 

[pitlife79]

Thanks for the advice. To answer Jan's question about corals,

I received a green tree coral, two ricordea's, a small colony of zoo's and a small colony of pink mushrooms. I already had xenia, a couple of zoo colonies and a ricordea.

 

[Jan]

Hi

Do post your water test results as soon as possible. Nothing in your new corals sounds unusual, unless the fact that they've all been added at once has caused a chemical load (?). In which case water change and carbon. You might want to research your new fish to see if there's anything special about them.