Okay, This is probably in the wrong place, but I couldn't decide between water quality or treatment.

I keep reading how meds don't do any good if the water isn't good, so I was wondering if I should wait to treat my fish again, when I'm not completely sure anything is wrong, or wait to get the ammonia that keeps rising in the tank under control? I'm wondering if the ammonia isn't what's making them act funny, anyway.

I know I should have a quarantine, but I really think in this case that if one fish has something, the other probably does too (they were shipped together).

Thanks everybody.

Hi. This is a difficult call, but if you are cycling your tank and the ammonia is not kept under control your fish will have all kinds of problems. The ammonia levels are toxic - which will lower their ability to combat any other problem that comes along. The result is very sick fish.

SInce you do not give the parameters of your tank or your fish or anything else, I think that the first thing I would want to ask you is a number of questions about your setup. Knowing these things may help in deciding what you would want to do first and how you may want to go about it.

I am going to move your post over to the 911 section of Disease and Treatment. At the top of the page you will find a series of red boxes with questions. These contain the important information that will help us help you sort out your fish's problems.

Alright, this is going to be a long one; I have a lot of stuff:

nitrates: 5.0
nitrites: 0
ammonia: 1.0
pH: 7.4
tap pH: 6.4 (baking soda is used at water changes for tank)

Fish in tank: Two 4-5 inch ranchu (Lalo and Yasu) added 3 weeks ago + 4 danios cycled the tank
The filter: Topfin 30
Dechlorinator: AquaSafe by Tetra Aqua, neutralizes chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metals (according to label). I picked up some Prime today.
Tank size: 29 gal
Water changes: 9gal change yesterday, 6 gal change today (those are most recent)
Medications: I dosed the tank with Anti-Fungus on Monday (last dose according to instructions), but I haven't put the carbon back in because I wasn't sure if I would need to add another medication.

Behavior: Yasu has been doing some very occasional flashing, but also stays at the top of the tank maybe about the fifth of the day (it's usually at night, there's no bubble wand either.) Lalo acts pretty good, but has a bump on his side. It appears to be coming out from underneath a scale, and when I added ANti-Fungus, the tip of it looked whitish/gray; since finishing the treatment it appears all black and possibly smaller? (he's black/bronze)

The reason I added the Anti-Fungus was because the same night I noticed the bump on Lalo's side, I noticed a light spot on the corner of his mouth. I searched the net, decided it might be columnaris, and the next morning when I woke up the light spot had turned into what looked like an open sore, plus his "lips" were whitish (not fuzzy though). I panicked and dosed the tank with the Anti-Fungus. I may have been wrong, but the sore appeared mostly healed the day after I dosed the tank. It now looks as if it was never there.

Would it be okay to add Prime to my tank with the other dechlorinator already in there? It says it removes ammonia, while the other one doesn't.

Could my filtration be one of the ammonia probs? I'm not sure how much it filters per hour, but I want to say it's 210gph.

HI,

As I am reading thru I notice that it seems your tank has already cycled but you have a spike of ammonia. This can often be caused by overfeeding or adding a new waste source recently.

A couple things I would recommend is to fast the fish a couple days this will reduce the waste as you are trying to get it under control.
I would work on the water quality and once it is good keep it there and see what happens.
Are you thru with the fungus treatment? If not maybe continue that until done and then give them a break.

I also noticed that you said one fish was flashing. This could be a sign of a parasite. In that case I would salt the tank to 0.3% and use a product called Parasite Clear by Jungle Labs.

The topfin filter I am not familar with. You want a filter that filters 10 times the water than the tank size. So with a 29 gal tank you need a filter that does 290 gals an hour.

Actually, I already have the tank salted to 0.3%, probably the only thing I forgot to mention.

Could I add some Prime to the tank to help with the ammonia when that other dechlorinator is already in there?

Yes Prime is very safe it can be doubled in strength.........I have heard. Not that I have done that. What are your params today?

Sorry it took so long to respond. The parameters today were:
nitrates: 5-10
nitrites: 0
ammonia: 0.5
pH: 7.4

I've been doing 7.5 gallon water changes every day since Friday, that's probably whiy the ammonia is down. I've also added Prime with the new water. I also bought a Marineland Penguin 350 in hopes that the ammonia problem is being caused by lack of filtration. I also have started feeding Lalo and Yasu once a day to help. I will probably go back to twice a day tomorrow to see if there is a change even with the ample filtration.

HOwever, Yasu has been swimming lopsided. It doesn't seem to be a problem with his fins, and I noticed it before I added the new filter. Could this be serious with the other things he's been doing?

The fish is kind of floating now? It could have a case of Swim Bladder Disease. Have you started fasting them yet? THis will help with the SBD and then feed Peas (thawed and deshelled of course).

No, there doesn't seem to be any prob with buoyancy, he's just swimming sideways. Not on his side completely, just a little crooked. It doesn't seem to be constant either, I'm probably just being too paranoid.

No I would say he has SBD, or fish usually can right themselves. Try fasting for a couple days and then give the peas, see if this helps.

I will do that.

Today I didn't do a water change, but I have the new filter on (with the old filter media in it). I checked the ammonia and it's at 0.25. Hopefully filtration was the biggest problem.

Onefish, your fishie doing any better?