chris55

New here so hi everybody, first off tank peramiters, amonia .5 or .25 nitrite 0 nitrate 0 pH 6.8 temp 79 setup for about 2 months now, water change once a week (35%) fish get tropical flakes and some shrmp pellets, and a algea wafer once a day. Tank is a 55 gallon, with a marine land 60 gal filter 60 gall air pump, did the fishless cycle on it (the one were you add amonia) the fish is 2 silver tipped catfish sharks one around 11"s and the other around 2 or 3"s and a 4" sailfin pleco. Now for the question, I did my water change today and notice the smaller silver tip has a swollen belly! It's never looked like this and his behaiver is normal, he dosent look like he is hurt or anything. I just dont know whats worng with him. Here is a picture of both of them

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CHoffman

Welcome to fishlore!!!
Did your shark eat allot recently?? After a big meal they could swell other then that I'll leave it to someone else who will be able to help you more on a different note if you have ammonia in your tank it usually means your tank isn't cycled, it's in a mini cycle or you have ammonia in your tap water.

Minnow

Welcome to the forum, Chris

If your fish has a swollen belly, he may have eaten too much. Whenever one of my fish is bloated, I feed it some pea. If you have a bag of frozen peas, take one out, shell it, and thaw it. Then, cut it into little tiny pieces to feed to your fish. Remember that a fish's stomach is the size of his eye. This will help you determine how small the pieces should be and how much to feed. The pea should help get things moving again.

You can also feed live, frozen, or freeze-dried daphnia for the same effect.


You say that you did a fishless cycle before adding the fish, but if you have ammonia, your tank is not cycled yet. Your tank will only be cycled when you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and a nitrate reading. Because you have fish in the tank now, you should step up water changes to 50% daily using Prime or Stress Coat+ as your water conditioner until your tank is fully cycled.

chris55

yea the amonia is from earlier today from feeding them but the tank is cylcled, it took about 11 days, he was like that before I feed him though

Minnow

Well, looking at the picture, it doesn't look very swollen to me. Just keep an eye on him, and see how he is in the morning.

If you have that much ammonia just from feeding them, you may want to cut back on how much you give them, and vacuum up any uneaten food before it starts to decompose.

chris55

yea i try to get them both fed but its either one or the other that gobbles it all up before the other can get any, I might be overfeeding them but i dought it, and i do have some pellits under the sunken ship i couldnt get to, cause when I doing my water change the bigger shark went and hid halfway in between the holes on the ship, I think that might be causing all the amonia, thanks for the help guys