Stars and Stripes not eating *Video Added

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
petebsbll
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Re: Stars and Stripes not eating *Video Added

Post by petebsbll »

After not eating for a month Huey ate this morning!

It wasn't an easy process because my 46 QT wasn't fully cycled, so I was doing large daily water changes to keep the ammonia near 0 and then adding 1 additional packet or Maracyn Two to the recommended dosage to try to make up for the lost water.

The Maracyn really did the trick though, I noticed during days 3-5 of treatment he was rarely resting on the bottom, and being more active. He still refused any food I placed in the tank. This morning he looked stressed, the ammonia levels probably raised over night. His 5th day of treatment was yesterday though so I moved him back to his display tank and he ate within 2 hours.

Would you recommend doing another 5 day treatment? I'm going to tackle the filter set-up next and get my nitrates under control. I will also begin soaking his food in vitamins, would you recommend vita chem by boyd enterprises? Do you ever add the vitamins directly to the tank or just soak them in food?

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and input. I'm happy he has some food in his belly, I'll post some pictures later!
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Re: Stars and Stripes not eating *Video Added

Post by Pufferpunk »

I soak in Vita-Chem & Selcon. Glad he's doing better!
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
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