Hello everyone, I apologize if this post is the wrong place as I just started using this forum in a hurry. I bought a dwarf lion fish about 4-5 days ago, he was lively and hunted his ghost shrimp and was doing fine. Yesterday, he started swimming upside down on the bottom. He literally looks dead, even when moved gently he rolls as if there's no life and sinks to the bottom. He occasionally gets a spurt of energy and swims through the sand upside down and just luls there. He was added a week after adding 2 clown fish to the new 55 gal tank. The water tests came back perfect every time, so they told me it's not the water as the clown fish would have been affected at first. I put 3 ghost shrimp in before leaving for work today and when I got home there was only 1 un-eaten one that I could find. I really would hate to lose this fish. Any advice? I posted a few pics. And I know he's still living because he opens his mouth and fluffs his gills slowly all the time and maybe try's to swim for about 5 seconds then gives up. I keep having to flip him. Any help would be awesome... thank you all
Dwarf lion upside down on bottom
- Thread starter Zak1994
- Start date
The tank is about 2 weeks old, and they told me to just put the bag on-top of the water for about 10 mins then open it and let him go put the shrimp in above him so he could eat without having to go far for a few days till he starts exploring. I've seen him go upside down on the base rock but I figured that was abnormal when it was just out in the open somewhere
They are the ones testing it. The salinity came back today at 1.0zd or 1.02D I'll attach a picture of the test results I got today. They had me do 2.5 gal of fresh osmosis water with 5 gal of salt water change today to lower the nitrate down. Not sure why the nitrate was high; I use there premixed salt water and haven't made any changes to the tank since the addition of the lion.
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lmforbis
Well-Known Member
I suspect your tank is not ready for fish. It takes a while for a tank to cycle. Typically it takes 1-2 months before it would be ready to add fish. Lesson #1 would be don't trust your fish store. I'd get my own test kits if I were you. At the very least ammonia, nitrate and nitrite. Also purchase a refractometer to measure the salinity.
Do a lot more research. Salt water is an amazing hobby but it requires a lot of research, time, planning and patience.
Do a lot more research. Salt water is an amazing hobby but it requires a lot of research, time, planning and patience.