We have a 38 gallon bowfront tank. It is fully cycled and stocked with:
2 dwarf gouramis, 4 golden barbs, 2 Cory cats, a bristlenose pleco, and 3 angelfish. I know we are on the side of being overstocker but according to aqadvisor it's at 118% so still within safe zone with water changes. we got the angelfish about 2 weeks ago and now two of them are swiming at an angle or sideways. The only thing we did over the past few days was add more plants and start using some sinking pellets for the cats. Automatically we did a 50% water change and tested our water and saw a spike in the ammonia . So I'm guessing this is what is causing the angels to swim this way but my question is what caused the spike... nothing has died (yet) and we do a 25% water change every 1-2 weeks. I know ammonia is due to waste product either by feces or in eaten food but we clean regularly as for the sinking pellets we only put 2 in at a time. The flakes we give are usually eaten before giving more. When we do our water changes we vacuum the gravel. So I'm just baffled. This is our first "big" tank and we just started doing the whole aquarium hobbies thing in February but started with a 5.5 gallon with a betta and some tetras after keeping everything alive for 2 months we wanted to go bigger and did so in May. We really enjoy our new hobby. And love our fish. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks
2 dwarf gouramis, 4 golden barbs, 2 Cory cats, a bristlenose pleco, and 3 angelfish. I know we are on the side of being overstocker but according to aqadvisor it's at 118% so still within safe zone with water changes. we got the angelfish about 2 weeks ago and now two of them are swiming at an angle or sideways. The only thing we did over the past few days was add more plants and start using some sinking pellets for the cats. Automatically we did a 50% water change and tested our water and saw a spike in the ammonia . So I'm guessing this is what is causing the angels to swim this way but my question is what caused the spike... nothing has died (yet) and we do a 25% water change every 1-2 weeks. I know ammonia is due to waste product either by feces or in eaten food but we clean regularly as for the sinking pellets we only put 2 in at a time. The flakes we give are usually eaten before giving more. When we do our water changes we vacuum the gravel. So I'm just baffled. This is our first "big" tank and we just started doing the whole aquarium hobbies thing in February but started with a 5.5 gallon with a betta and some tetras after keeping everything alive for 2 months we wanted to go bigger and did so in May. We really enjoy our new hobby. And love our fish. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks
