Disabled fish!

[pixie-egg]

Anita do you cook the pea's first? I never have. Just thawed them out and de-skinned them. X

[Alan1]

swim bladder problems

[Rae]

Best practice for cleaning fish tanks is to only take out around half the water rather than completely changing all of it! I only ever used to take out about a third of the water and just top back up with fresh! Hope you sort the floating problem! x

[Alan1]

Originally Posted by MiShelley

He came out of the back room in the shop as there were only 3 orandas (thanks Greg!) left so they'd put them in the back to make room for all the new pond fish so I didn't get to see him swimming
I threw the old water out, should I not do that?
I'm afraid I don't dechlorinate the water as someone told me that if you use too much you kill the fish so I just leave it to stand for 45mins, should I dechlorinate it instead?
I'm pretty definate I didn't knock the bag!
When I got him home and looked at him properly I noticed his tail appears to be much shorter than Little Donkeys and pretty jagged like it's been chewed off, could that be anything to do with it?
They have some live plants in their tank but I never knew about peas and cucumber!! Will try that this eve.
They're currently fed on a mix of floating and sinking food as I never know which one to use so will definately stick to the sinking stuff and keep the floating stuff to chuck in my pond.
Thank you for all the help you clever people x

when you do a water change you should only change 20% of the water otherwise you remove all the useful bacteria from the water and kill all the useful bacteria in the filter. changing the whole tank of water and not using a dechlorinator will cause filter crash. However, coldwater fish can stand a lot more than tropicals, tropicals would be dead in no time. Over feeding is the cause of 99% of fish tank problems. Understanding the Nitrogen Cycle is the most important and most basic part of fishkeeping, get to know that and then it becomes much easier.
After floating a bag and adding small amounts of tank water to the bag every five minutes the fish should be lifted out and put into the tank. Never pour the water from the bag into your tank as it can contain all kinds of unwelcome possibilities

Your new fish sounds to me like it's been bought like that with a swim bladder problem and possible fin rot. You can get swim bladder treatments but none of the treatment stuff comes cheap and I usually found the swim bladder stuff didn't work anyway. You may also need fin rot treatment. Putting the fish in beside another will mean most likely the other one will get fin rot too

I kept fish for 20 years and made every mistake there is to make

[Anita Sayles]

Originally Posted by caledonia

I kept fish for 20 years and made every mistake there is to make

That's how we learn

@ Pixie-egg... There's no need to cook the peas

[R9ANV]

its the swim bladder babe

[MiShelley]

Lemony Snicket and his swim bladder seem to be feeling much better now after a bit of the old pea treatment - we are now swimming the right way up!!!!
Thank you all for the wonderful advice, I have taken it all on board and my fish keeping skills are improving!!
x

[Rae]

Yay!! Good old peas eh?! Good for kiddies good for fishies! Love the name by the way! Glad to hear all is well x

[SeeShell]

I have 2 of these fish. They're about 6 years old now. One always floats at the top and has difficulties reaching the bottom of the tank.I've tried everything but nothing works!!!

[Alan1]

Any swimming problems is almost always down to the swim bladder. it's like a balloon inside them. check this out http://www.helium.com/items/1274652-...roblem-in-fish

my cichlids used to like peas, the outer skin was removed so that they split into two halves. The shrimps would sometimes make off with them too. I had an upside down catfish, they swim upside down. you may have seen them in pet shops