Several months ago I lost my marbled female angel to unknown causes, the golden male is fine. She could not swim overnight and spun. Eventually over a long period of time died.

Early this June I bought a small angel and she was doing fine until three days ago and I noticed that she was spinning at times, other times she swam normally and was seemingly healthy, doing what angels do. She will still feed if she can swim to food. My young angel is now in obvious trouble - lying for short periods at the bottom of the tank. She is red around the inside of her gills. All other fish in the tank seem fine. Any suggestions.

Ph is 7.0 (normal for that tank) Nitrate, Nitrite both fine. Ammonia 0

HI Goldie,

Inflamation of the gills is usually associated with ammonia levels.

Fish pass a percentage of waste via the gills. Pehaps the level was high but has since been corrected.

Regular water changes should keep the levels acceptable.

How many fish in the tank,... What Size tank,... How often do you do water changes and by how much,... What are you feeding,.. eg, single type or variety/live/frozen etc, plus any other info you have ????

Bill. (Pegasus)

You might try adding some salt to the tank. Salt is kind of a treatment for having no idea what's wrong, but it won't hurt. Might help a bit if it's due to some kind of bacteria or fungus. The usual is 1 tablespoon per 40 liters to 1 per/20 liters. This is salt for aquariums, don't use table salt.

she died. thanks for the help though.

Fish in tank - one angel (adult) 6 neon tetra; 2 corydoras bronze(adult); 1 peppered catfish; 1 Siamese flying fox; 2 clown loaches (juniors)

Tank size 29cm x 74cm x 34cm = 73 litres = 16 gallon

UGF in place working well.

I feed flake food alternated with blood worms (half a frozen cube) every other day. Just changed to community bites (pellets) today.

Water changes 1/3 of tank a week.

This is the tank I have the algae problem in - thus the flying fox.

I now hesitate to get another angel until I can track down the cause. The deceased had been in the tank for 8 - 10 weeks and was growing well and settled in with the resident angel peacefully.

All the other fish are fine.

You only feed your fish every other day? Hmmm, and I feel like I'm starving mine only feeding them once a day.

I feed mine about 5 time a day just a litle at a time

I feed mine twice a day, about noon or when I get home from work and then just before bed. I need to cut back on their food a bit though, I started doing water changes twice weekly and thought, "I can feed them a bit more now." So I started feeding them a LOT more. Too much, I think.

Hi,

Goldie said,

I feed flake food alternated with blood worms (half a frozen cube) every other day

Goldie is saying that she alternates between types of food each day, which IMO is good.

Hi Goldie,

Hard to isolate your problem, but doesn't seem to be poor food related, but there is a post somewhere referring to fish gulping their food which has not time to be digested and causes swimming probs, which you mentioned yours had.

Just looked up the article. It's in "Freshwater... Newbie with a query"

Might help.

Bill (Pegasus)

Bill you could be so right for the little angel sure had an appetite and always gulped food even taking air in, for it was trying to get the food before it hit the water virtually.

Feeding more often just caused pollution in the tank even with weekly water changes. An older fish keeper recommended once a week however I just could not do that. His fish were so healthy though I wondered if overfeeding can cause more problems for a beginner tankwise etc.

Back again - just checked out re bloat. Could have been answer to spiralling however would she have died on the bottom from that??

I had an older angel that died a while ago- it was spiralling and looked bloated- I was a bit concearned over the cause of death so I had the fish sent away for autopsy. The results came back as kidney failiure as a likely result of old age.

Old age probably wasn't a factor in your fish, but alot of internal disorders like tumors etc can cause strange behaviour and bloating.

How much does it cost to get an autopsy on a fish? Be interesting to know what killed the fish sometimes if it isn't something obvious. Just had one of my Serpaes die last night for no apparent reason. But I wouldn't bother for just a tetra.

could just be old i think they only live for a 2 years