Anybody experience this?

[JLake]

Today I did a 90 gallon water change on my 180. I have this one fish who acts stressed after every water change. This one yellow calvus sits on the bottom and gasps while its tankmates seem to love the water change. After about a hour it begins to act normal. It acts so weird that the first time I seen it happen I figured it was a goner for sure. There are many calvus and comps in this tank but nobody acts like this one. I do my water changes the prehistoric way. I pull water using a few 5 gallon pails, than i fill them(treating with prime) and let them sit a few mins before putting back into the tank.

[JLake]

Oh yeah I do this same water change every Sat. Anywhere from 50 to 90 gallons a week.

[Wingin' It]

I've not had it happen to me before (that I can remember) but maybe he's just a wussie or has some kind of imbalance in him or just something we can't see.

[JLake]

Yeah I dont get it. Hes fine now, untill next sat.

[vince0]

yeah, like the fish on finding nemo that stresses out about cleanliness ... mental health diseases can affect everyone lol

[jvision]

I've seen it with a couple Tangs (some petricolas, gobies and a couple paracyps) and shrimp - except the shrimp went crazy instead of lazy. With the Tangs, it was never a type of fish, just individuals like you're experiencing.

[Evolution]

It could be gill damage or something caught in a gill, like a hair or filter wool fiber. If a tank is filled with a hose (what I do) and dechlorinator is added directly to the tank a fish can swim into the stream of water and get hit with a blast of chlorine water or what have you, causing damage to the gill fillaments and inturn causing it to have difficulty breathing.

[JLake]

Yeah i try to let the buckets sit a few mins at least before adiing them to the tank. Its such a pain but i only pull about 100 to 150 gallons every week from my tanks. I Do it 2 buckets at a time so 10 to 15 trips hahaah.

Edited September 6, 2010 by JLake

[Burbot]

You could try to cut down on the volume of water change. 25-30%/week is good enough. I lost a tank to chlorine burn from doing a large water change not too long ago. Same symptoms you describe after a big change of sulking on the bottom of the tank, breathing heavily, eventually killed them. Worst time seems to be in the spring when we have a lot of run off, or after heavy rains. Hope this helps.

Cheers

:beer:

[CursiveDuck]

I have a friend here on the forum that I use to work with, and we were experiencing quite similar reactions out of our fish, and a bit of a die off from our tanks, so he phoned the treatment plant here in the city, and it seems every once in awhile the city seems to up the amount of chasers(Chlorine and such) in the water, beyond the normal amount, Or so we were told by the guy on the phone when we phoned anyways! He advised we just use twice the amount of prime indicated to get rid of the extra chemicals. We just did smaller water changes 20-30% weekly and up the amount of prime, and it stopped almost a 100% of the die-off and stopped a lot of the weird behavior we experienced after the water changes we were doing. Maybe it'll work for you too? Or you might just have a weird fish :P

[Ishkabod]

You have one odd fish on your hand methinks. Good luck and personally if the other fish are perked up by the water change then i don't see how there could be a problem with the water chemistry. The only thing i can think of is the fish doesn't like the difference in temperature that the water change creates. The buckets while sitting at room temperature probably are still colder than the tank and that could be what is causeing the behaviour. Try useing a heater in the buckets to warm up the water or even a teakettle. I have the big 3 gallon ice cream pails and i fill them with filtered water and they sit 2 at a time in a sink full of hot water for about 8 mins and that brings the temp of the cold cold water to something cloce to tank temp. Try it once. I find the sink method easiest. Once you figure out the time it takes for the buckts to warm up to the right temp using the hottest water your water heater provides(took me 1 water change) then it's easy from there.

Good luck

L