Sabi

Hi

For about a month now my cories have been acting strangely. From the 3 I have (2 peppered, 1 bronze) this behavior affects only the peppered.

They'll be scavenging for for food in the substrate like normal or behaving in a normal manner when all of a sudden one will stop and just keep still slowly floating upward. It will then swim back down and carry on as it was doing before.
On another occasion, one just stops and stays like that and slowly falls on its side.
Another time i saw the male flat on its side like it was dead. For a while it stayed like that but then came right again and swam away like nothing was wrong.
My females stomach is round, i dont know if its because she's carrying eggs or what but she sometimes gasps after this happens as i saw her float to the top, float around the surface and then come down gasping.
This does not affect the bronze cory at all.

The only thing i am having a problem water quality wise is that my nitrates are staying at 20. I am doing between 10- 20% water changes weekly and not even halfway stocked but yet my nitrates are high. I don't feed my fish one day a week and feed them once daily, slowly. My tap water has 0 nitrates. This has me whacked!

Thanks for your advise - on the cories, i'm going to open a thread on my water prob.

COBettaCouple

Hmm.. do you have aeration in the tank? Do you have live plants in there? Has this affected their coloring in any way?

I would go to 30-40% water changes weekly as part of the regular tank maint.

Sabi

I do have 2 powerfilters (1 i put on every now and then) that provide aeration as well. I do have live plants and as for the coloring being affected, i would say no. I didn't notice any change from what they were.

I'll give that a go, thanks Dave.

Sorry to say both died today.Your question on aeration made me think. For 2 hours every day we have power outages. I thought that that amount of time wouldn't affect them much. Could that have had effect after all. No other fish are affected and the remaining cory is as chirpy as ever.

kra-z-fishmumm

I noticed a thing with my cories,,, when I turn off my filters and powerhead to feed,,(I like to do it this way) which is maybe 15 min. at the most,,, they start heading to the top, then when I turn it all back on, they go back to the bottom and act normal... Once I forgot to turn it back on, oh maybe less than an hour later, and they were going whacky...up and down the sides of the tank, running into each other... So, maybe the outages are affecting them. Just my

A thought ( now your lucky cause I don't get many of them), what if you use a air bubble rock that uses batteries for the time that the outages occur? It would atleast keep air going etc...

Sabi

Yip, i intend getting battery powered pumps for my SW setup so i might as well get one for my FW tanks too.

COBettaCouple

I'm sorry you lost them. Given the timing, I'd not be surprised if those power outages caused the problem.

Sabi

So what you are saying is that in the 2 hours that there is no oxygen being supplied, the oxygen already present is too little for the fish?

COBettaCouple

Actually, I'm wondering if/how the outages would affect the filter more, but also the aeration and perhaps even the heater. Has this been a regular thing for a long time or is it a recent thing?

Sabi

Well the outages started full time about 2 weeks ago.
How would this affect the equipment?

COBettaCouple

The regular stoppages of filtration could be creating micro-cycles and/or killing off any filter media that gets dry. When the power outtages occur, does any of the filter media remain exposed to air?

Sabi

No, both filters are totally internal. I dont take out any equip either.
2 hours enough to create a mini cycle? Then it looks like i'm in for trouble.
I was thinking of getting battery powered pumps for oxygen would it be really necessary to get to power filters too?

COBettaCouple

Well, if the filters are both internal and don't dry out any, then I don't think you'd be losing bacteria or mini-cycling any. So, the only thing that I can think of is maybe some sort of issue with oxygen levels in the water.. but that's just a guess. This is a bit of a mystery to me.

Sabi

Well at least no mini cycles are being caused.

COBettaCouple

I guess it's not uncommon for corys and otos to give us mysteries like that, but still sorry that you lost them.

Sabi

Yeah, and i hope i dont get anymore mysterious deaths!
One thing i was considering is that i used to keep my temp at 27'C, with that heat level maybe the oxygen was going faster and the cories couldn't take it? Anyway i lowered the temp to 25'C, hope thats better.

COBettaCouple

Yea, I think they like it around 24-25C.