Not sure what's going on

[noenyu]

I put Taco into his new 5 gallon tank last Thursday. It has Caribsea Super Natural Tahitian Moon substrate, a heater, an anubias nana, and a wisteria that's broken up to 5 parts. It's uncycled but I'm cleaning it about every 3 days (I'm trying to have a planted tank that will filter itself). Taco has always just laid around, even in his first 1 gallon tank, and sometimes when he lays his body kind of twists to the side but, again, he used to do that in his old tank.

Today he's been doing that a lot more but with clamped fins. I'm not sure why. He's eating fine, 2 pellets in the morning 2 in the afternoon. He doesn't seem to have any other symptoms other then him laying around with clamped fins. Any ideas?

[Phoxly]

What are your water levels at? Are you intending to cycle it? Cause the plants won't be able to filter it unless it has cycled, the plants filter nitrates and nitrites, but not ammonia spikes which are common when first cyclig. To help the cycling process you can try adding water from another tank, like if you have a smaller tank I think you can add a few gallons to help develop bacteria. If he is stressed out he may be layin around more?

[noenyu]

Originally Posted by Phoxly

What are your water levels at? Are you intending to cycle it? Cause the plants won't be able to filter it unless it has cycled, the plants filter nitrates and nitrites, but not ammonia spikes which are common when first cyclig. To help the cycling process you can try adding water from another tank, like if you have a smaller tank I think you can add a few gallons to help develop bacteria. If he is stressed out he may be layin around more?

I'm not planning on cycling. I went to Tropical Fish Keeping and read the articles on natural planted tanks and asked a few questions to start up this tank. I did research on it and from what I read, plants can use ammonia better then nitrates and if you have a well planted tank, plants will become the filter. My tank isn't planted the way it should be so I'm doing regular water changes a few days. I'm wondering if maybe he ate some of the substrate, it's sand like. Could that harm him? Maybe I'll move him back to his 1 gallon for a few days and see how he is.

[1fish2fish]

You can skip cycling if you have enough of the right kind of plants (which I believe are fast growing plants). Do you have a test kit so you can monitor your parameters? If you don't know what your readings are you can't know if the plants are absorbing all the waste let off by the fish.

[artist4life]

i hope your fish gets better

[bettablaze]

Maybe hes stressed that happened to my betta fish Nemo too.

[noenyu]

Originally Posted by bettablaze

Maybe hes stressed that happened to my betta fish Nemo too.

I think it was stress and I was just worrying too much. He seemed fine the next day. Found out my dad had been tapping on his tank so maybe that's what caused the stress.