[AquaticLife] cycling tank one fish not eating
It’s good that you have a test kit and you are testing your water. And… you can almost never do too many partial water changes.
Fortunately, your pH is only 7.0 so that makes the ammonia less toxic to the fish but any ammonia isn’t a good thing. The higher the pH, the more toxic ammonia becomes. You should do a 25% PWC (partial water change) whenever the ammonia gets to 1.0… presuming your tap water has 0.0 ammonia. If your tap water has a higher ammonia level, then you might want to get a tap water conditioner like Prime (or other brands) which will help make the ammonia safer for your fish.
Have you done a baseline test on your tap water yet? See my blog (link in my sig) and a recent blog gives the details on how to establish your tap water baseline.
As far as your fish not eating, it could be a number of things. The fact that it’s hiding more generally means it’s not feeling well. That’s a natural thing for sick fish to do since Darwinism (survival of the fittest) takes over often when there is a sick fish and the other fish will sometimes bully it until it dies. I’m guessing you don’t have a quarantine tank or extra filter systems to use to set up a Q-tank.
It would have been better if you would have “Fishless Cycled” your tank but now that you are stuck with “Cycling With Fish”, go to my blog and go to the “A to Z of Fish Keeping” page and right near the top is a link to a detailed article on “Cycling With Fish” that will help guide you through this process which can take up to a couple of months or more. If you know somebody with a healthy tank, you could ask them for a handful of their gravel or a piece of their filter media and put that in your filter system which will go a long way in cycling your tank much faster.
While at the A to Z page, also take one or both of the FREE online tutorials on fish keeping which will walk you through a lot of the other basics. Feel free to come back here with any and all questions.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to articles referenced above listed on the right side under Archives - Year, Month and under Labels)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
