# Albino cory with red body and strange behaviour



## Lynsay (May 16, 2010)

Something strange is happening in my tank!

I bought a 20L tank about 6 weeks ago, so that some of my smaller fish would be safe (I have a larger tank that has 2 pictus catfish with very large mouths...) It was set up in a bit of a hurry so that a siamese fighting fish would have somewhere to go. As a result, it wasn't really cycled properly before fish were added. The tank came with a bottle of stuff that was meant to speed up the cycling process (the bottle said it would be immediate - I was pretty skeptical about that, but used it anyway). I also filled the new tank with water from my established tank.

So after about 3 weeks I had the siamese fighter, 2 albino corys, 2 stripy corys (not sure what they're called!) 6 glass catfish and 4 serpae tetras. I also have an albino bristlenose catfish, a peppermint bristlenose catfish and a gold spot pleco in there - these 3 will be going into the bigger tank as soon as they are big enough to be safe. I came home one day to discover a cory and a glass catfish missing tails and dead. I assumed it was the Siamese fighter as he was charging at the glass catfish. Not wanting anymore deaths, I took him to the fish shop. Yesterday I discovered another dead glass catfish, minus its tail. I watched the fish quite closely, and discovered the serpae tetras doing a fair bit of chasing around the tank - they too have gone back to the fish shop (which I really hate doing, but if they aren't compatible, I'm not happy to let them continue killing my other fish). Anyway, that's not the current problem.

On Thursday I came home to find my albino bristlenose dead, with what looked like internal bleeding (his entire stomach was red). The fish shop told me today they had lost a couple of their bristlenoses too, and couldn't tell me the cause of this, or why my bristlenose appeared to have internal bleeding. They gave me another albino bristlenose, as I only bought that one 3 days before. This afternoon, I have noticed my 2 albino corys have reddish gills, and tonight I've discovered them swimming really erratically and one has a red body towards its tail.

Does anyone have any ideas what this could be? I've tested my water and there is no ammonia, no nitrate, and between 0 and 0.25 ppm nitrite - although this probably means my tank is not cycled, right? I have put some prime in to take care of the possible nitrite, but as there isn't any ammonia in the tank, would it be at all possible that it is ammonia toxicity?

Any help would be appreciated


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## DanMarion (Apr 13, 2010)

20 liters is about 5 gallons... Thats WAY too many fish to have in a 5 gallon aquarium, especially an uncycled one. I'm surprised that there is no ammonia in the tank. I would relocate most of those fish into much bigger housing and perform a major water change.


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## eileen (Feb 24, 2009)

If you do have a 5 gal. You have way to many fish. It's a water Qty problem and the only way to fix that is water changes. I would use the 5 gal. tank as a QT tank for sick or new fish before adding them to a new tank. Live plants are better then plastic also to help absorb the Nitrates, Nitrites, Ammonia. Hornswort is good so is Val, and Anacharis. I just keep a couple of fish in my small tanks that I use for a QT or new fish holding tank. I remove these to my other tanks when I need to use them. Small tanks call for smaller size fish try:

3 male endlers like guppies but smaller

3 tetras in a 3 gal. or 5 for a 5 gal. these are sensitive to new set-ups so you need to wait.

dwarf shrimps are also good but are sensitive to new tank set ups.

Assassin snails are really cool snails to get. You need to feed them other snails to eat or protein food like bloodworms 

White cloud minnows are really hardy fish to use in a cycle. I used a small school of these to cycle my 20 gal. tank and they all survived the cycle. I used my other tanks water and the filter media to cycle the tank faster and also used this product called cycle for a few weeks.

Zebra Danios are also a good hardy tetra for small set ups a small school depending on your tank size.

You have to remember that some tetras are senstive to new tanks like neon tetras and they do best in a small school. I also like Harlequen Rasboras as I find them very hardy for tetras. I hope that your problems get resolved. Look at the older threads under a search here as you can learn alot by looking at older threads for advice also.


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