Help please poorly looking tropical parrot fish

Hi , i do hope somebody can help , one of my parrot fish is looking
incredibley short of breath , he kept heading for the top of the tank to
talk a gulp of air , both my air pumps are working fine , but he seems to of
lost all his energy and is now struggling and is just sat near the bottom of
the tank , he seemed perfectly fine earlier in the day , one of my other
parrot fish was doing the same but seems to of calmed down and appears to be
acting much more normally.

My tank is a rio 240 and the fish are tropical.

But one thing i have done to my tank set up in the past few days , is to
take out all the plants , they seem to be doing little more than making the
place messy with dead bits of plant floating around etc and the plants just
seemed to float around at the top all of the time , still living etc with
but not at the bottom in the gravel.

Have i done the wrong thing and should i introduce more plants fairly
quickly ?

I've check the ph and aminona levels and all seem fine ?!?!!?!? my temperate
of the tank is around 76

I'm stuck and the plants seem to be the only major change i have made to my
tank set up in the past 5 days ?!?!?

By the signs of things i'd say my parrot fish won't make it through to the
morning ....... any advice ?!?!?!?!