Silverfox12578 wrote:Hi everyone. :)
So.. I'm looking for some rather urgent advice..
I brought a small school of glo-fish danio's today and I'm a bit worried about them.. they are extremely hyperactive.. one or two of them looks bloated and they are mostly staying at the top of the tank, they look really stressed (They aren't gasping and I don't think they're showing any other signs of sickness, they even ate a little fish flakes earlier). My water perameters are normal, I have tested it, and my tank is fully cycled. My temperature is at 25-27 degrees celsius.
is it just the stress of bringing them home to a new tank or could they be sick?
Please offer any advice! Even though I've only had them for a few hours, I love these little guys and I don't want to loose them.
Thank you for any help!
From personal experience, I can say that glofish in particular are generally just not well when bought from chain petstores like Petco or Petsmart- they seem to me to be more susceptible to stress-related illnesses and PH imbalances and similar changes in the tank- I find that they don't do well at all in the small three-to-five gallon tanks that you can buy simply due to the fact that they are in a plastic tank; though I can't say I've looked after them enough to really know for sure.
Glofish are still dainos- super pretty genetically modified dainos, but dainos nonetheless- so they should exhibit all the same behaviors and have the same needs; how many glofish do you have, and in what size of a tank? Dainos are schooling fish, but in a small enough tank without any other fish- bigger fish, typically- they don't exhibit the same behaviors, and will often simply just not feel the need to school at all. I have a 35 gallon tank that went from five dainos to two over the course of almost nine years now- those dainos about rule the tank, but I don't have any typically aggressive fish in the tank nor have I ever, and so all of my typical 'schooling fish' just don't school at all; different fish have different personalities, and the typical behaviors change depending on those personalities and the conditions they're under. It really just takes time to narrow down what's 'normal' for your fish, and they're figuring it out at the same time themselves.
Moving into a new tank is a really stressful experience for a fish, especially as your tank will be very different from the pet store tank- it will have none of the bacteria and be at a different PH level, as well as being a self-contained system whereas in pet stores the tanks are all hooked up to the one pump- all of the water for all those tanks circulates through all of them and it makes them 'feel bigger' to the fish- there's nothing you can really do about this, and it just takes the fish a little bit to get acclimatized to their new surroundings.
However, feeding them during this time is a bad idea- their bodies are already trying to process the new water, new oxygen levels, new space of movement, and physically processing food and the excess oxygen they take in from gulping the food off the surface can really knock their systems for a loop, and it can cause them a lot of stress if they overeat or take in too much oxygen- that could be why two of your fish look bloated, from taking in too much food or oxygen or both- they'll look and feel a little miserable for a while, but it'll pass. Fish are pretty tough- they don't get sick unless they're stressed out about something and that compromises their immune systems, so give them a little bit to sort themselves out. ^^
I'd recommend just keeping an eye on them for the time being, maybe not feeding them for today and tomorrow if they still seem unwell by then- but they're tough little things, and they'll pull through if you give them time to get used to their new surroundings. :)