discolouration?

[BillyFurtado]

Hey guys merry christmas so i turned off my light lastnight and everything was fine. I woke up today and one of my neons are gone and my female blue ram is like discoloured? the male ram is chasing her quite a bit so i have no idea whats happening all my other fish look good (discuss and rummynoses) i do a water change every second day of 50% any feed back would be great thanks.

[sammigold]

Is a 50% water change too much every second day? I think it may be. maybe try 25%.

Neons may be short lived in the higher temps that discus require and find that they can sometimes become victim to the mouths of discus..(ie. maybe it was eaten.), you will find that cardinal tetras cope better with these temps and tend to grow bigger as well so you may want to try getting cardinals rather than neons if you can.

Sorry I cant help with the rams as I have not kept these pretty little fish.

Hopefully somebody else may be able to help.

Hope you had a nice christmas,
sammi

[FishLover]

Neons=Discus lunch.

Most likely, it was eaten by one of the discus. I had 9 of them in my tank, they went missing one by one till all of them were gone.

If you want to keep them, you may want to move them out to a different tank or they will end up as expenisve discus lunch. Cardinal are a better to adapt to the discus tank. They are bigger and can handle the high temp.

[mcloughlin2]

Is a 50% water change too much every second day? I think it may be. maybe try 25%

Not really. Some breeders change 80-90% twice a day.

Ok, while most people jump to the conclusion this neon has become discus dinner i find something abit suss here.

We don't just have the neon's disapearance there is also the discolouration of the ram.

My first guess would have been shock from the lights turning on and the neon becoming dinner, but lets presume the neon disaperance was not from becoming dinner to discus. My guess would be your male ram is now in breeding condition, so he is asserting his dominance to the other fish in the tank. I would say he has taking down your neon, then he has turned his aggression to your female (Which doesnt want to breed) which could end up being a deadly!

Keep your eye on him, and if you notice that he doesnt settle down, remove him for a few days. If when he is put back in he hasn't settled try adding abother 2 rams to the tank.

Sam

[sammigold]

Is a 50% water change too much every second day? I think it may be. maybe try 25%

Not really. Some breeders change 80-90% twice a day.

Hi Sam, I know what you are saying, but then they are doing it twice a day everyday, probably with barebottom tanks, there is no biological cycle happening as the water is being constantly changed.

If you are doing large changes but not as often, maybe (and I am only hypothisising.. I dont know...) the tank is mini cycling and ammonia/nitrite spikes occuring as the bacteria is not getting a chance to settle.... if you are going to do very large water changes on a display tank you are going to have to affect the cycle somehow... especially if tank is planted etc.

this may in turn, stress the fish, causing colouring issues etc. and rams are pretty fragile at the best of times from what I have read...

what do you think? am I totally away with the fairies thinking along those lines?

cheers
sammi

[sammigold]

^bump ... looking for opinions...

[Merrilyn]

Hi Sammi, once a tank is fully cycled, water only becomes the means to carry food to the nitrifying bacteria which is living happily in the filter and in the gravel and to some extent on the plants and side walls of the tank. Bacteria do not stay long free floating in the water, they attach to a solid surface of some kind, where they grow and multiply as the flow of water brings food, in the form of ammonia, directly to them.

The amount of available food will govern the size of the nitrifying bacteria colony. Fortunately fish keep producing food (in the form of ammonia) simply by eating, breathing and eliminating.

The problem with doing infrequent large water changes is not so much that it will cause your tank to go into a mini cycle, but rather that it will dramatically alter the pH and hardness of the water.

The sudden change in pH can cause fish to go into pH shock, which can even cause death.

Smaller, more frequent water changes are much less of a problem. If you have missed water changes for several weeks, don't suddenly do a huge water change, the shock will be too great for your fish. They have slowly adapted to the conditions of your tank (even if they're not ideal) over several weeks, and you don't want to alter things suddenly. Do a couple of small (around 20%) water changes in the first week followed by two larger water changes in the second week.

Have you ever bought some new fish (tetras for instance) and dropped them into your existing tank, only to have them die within a couple of days, while similar fish have lived quite happily in your tank for months. The reason is that fish can become used to quite extreme water conditions, if they alter very slowly. The new fish have no such opportunity to adapt, and the shock is enough to cause their death. This is something that often remains a mystery to novice fish keepers, and unfortunately some LFS.

[sammigold]

Thanks so much for clarifying Ladyred.... that is very interesting... thank you

sammi