Kelly wrote in message ...
mine scratch a lot as well, did you put any salt in the tank? check for
raised scales, or white spots, it may be a parasite, but I find if I do a
water change and forget to put in salt, they scratch a lot more.
Kelly

"Dee" wrote in message
. ..
Help! Alot of my small Malawis have started to scratch themselves on the
sand. They seem to be trying to scatch their gill areas. I have checked
the
water parameters & all seem OK. the pH is 8.0, gh 6, no2 0, no3 10. The
kh
is rather high at 20. Could this be the problem?

Can anyone offer any advice on what to do?

tia,

Dee


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I have read alot about this topic, as mine were doing the same thing. The
most important thing that I found was to make sure you keep your water
paramaters stable. Don't worry about the Gh and Kh, as long as you don't go
ramping them up or down.

Did you just set up this tank? if so ask the source of the fish what their
paramaters are, and see if your water is very different, if it is, then this
is probably your problem.

I read alot of people say that salt will help this problem, so by all means
try that, but it didn't really help me. Consider if you add salt the tank,
you'll need to add the same amount every time you do a water change.

As an extra precaution, I treated with a product designed to kill flukes and
worms, I forget the name of the chemical, but that also helped to stop the
scratching.

another reason you might get this problem is if you try to make your water
too hard but piling in alot of stuff like baking soda etc.

if the fish were raised in gh 50ppm, and you throw them in at the "proper"
150-200ppm, they aren't going to like it.