Jarred fish water change help

[cajunamy]

Ok, so I'm changing 3/4 full gallon jars daily on so far 5 fish. 4 females and 1 male. These are my breeders. I have another male breeder but he is in a tank.

Every day when I change the water, these fish get very stressed. I've never experienced this before with any fish. They immediately get dark stress stripes when I try to catch them. I have tried with my hand, which I thought would be the most gentle way to do it, I have tried with a net but that is even more chasing than with my hand. I will go to a cup next but I really dislike doing that as I don't want any old water going into the new water in the jars.

All water is exactly the same as the old. Same temperature as well. I have a 30 gallon tub and I fill it up with tap water, add stress coat (or prime, whatever is closer). I have 5 IAL in the tub as well. As of today I started adding 1 tbsp of salt to try and prevent disease. Every day I take 5 new jars and fill them up. I put them in the same place that the fish are, so the temp will be exactly the same. The next day those are the jars I use to put the fish into, and the old water gets dumped down the toilet.

Also, should I have something in the jars - I have a few that have pots, but there has been no difference in the stress level when I change the water.

[bettafish15]

Salt is not to be used as a preventative, because then when you need it for an actually ill fish, it will not work. Only use salt when the fish is ill.

[indjo]

No matter how you do it, if you take them out they will be stressed. Most of them hate being "handled".
Try siphoning the water out (and wastes) so you won't disturb them too much (this too can still stress them). Perhaps you can try picking them up with cups. That way they don't get out of water. To get them used to you and or the cup, often place your finger/the cup near/on top of their jar, specially just before feeding and during exercise.

[1fish2fish]

What I do is I have double the jars. So for 5 fish I hav 10 jars. Fill the new jar dump the fish into a net over the dirty water bucket and before he knows what's going on he's back in water. Then when your done you can clean out the old jars and get them readdy for the nexct time.

Usually of you do it everyday they get used to it eventially. I also keep IAL leaf in my jars to act as a hide and to release tannins.

[cajunamy]

how often do you change your IAL?

[1fish2fish]

Not until it starts falling apart.... Usually once a month maybe?

[cajunamy]

Ok thanks, have been wondering about that.

[Dragonlady]

Try using a turkey baster. If you are doing daily water changes anyway, this can help reduce daily stress on your fish.

[Abby]

+1 to the siphon

[cajunamy]

Ok upon changing their water today, I tried the dump into a net method. The blue girl that is easily stressed did stress line a bit, but after about 3 minutes she was back to normal :)