Itchy malawis

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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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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Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 14:31:08 -0400, "Kelly"
wrote:

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.

I agree. If I change the water and take too long to add my baking soda
and epsom salts, they'll scratch for a few hours.

Also, mine sometimes "scratch" in the sand when doing their breeding
rituals (I watched my male and female red zebras do that this
morning).

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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Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.598 / Virus Database: 380 - Release Date: 28/02/2004


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.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 07:42:56 +1000, "Paul" wrote:

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.

Keep in mind that salt doesn't evaporate with the water, so if you
kept dosing the same amount every time you did a water change, you
could end up with a high concentration of it.

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.

I wouldn't use any medication "just because". The ones that are used
for flukes and whatnot generally have copper in it, which in high
concentractions (and it's not that high for fish), can end up killing
your fish, snails AND plants. Inverts beweare.

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.

Sodium bicarbonate will only raise the pH to a certain point where it
will cap. It would be quite a feat if you managed to make your water
"too hard" by just adding baking soda.

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.

It really has nothing to do about how the fish are raised, and
everything to do about how quickly you raise water parameters - that's
why you ensure that you raise water properties such as pH, GH and KH
slowly to acclimatize the fish to these new conditions.

Keep in mind that salt doesn't evaporate with the water, so if you
kept dosing the same amount every time you did a water change, you
could end up with a high concentration of it.

yeah you are right, what I should have said was add a proportionate amount
of salt to how much water is changed.

I wouldn't use any medication "just because". The ones that are used
for flukes and whatnot generally have copper in it, which in high
concentractions (and it's not that high for fish), can end up killing
your fish, snails AND plants. Inverts beweare.

yeah this stuff doesn't actually contain copper, I will find the name of the
chemical and post it, it's mainly a wormer, but it works for gill problems
as well. the stuff worked for me anyway. it makes sense that the stress
that makes them scratch would open them up to paracites as well yeah?


Sodium bicarbonate will only raise the pH to a certain point where it
will cap. It would be quite a feat if you managed to make your water
"too hard" by just adding baking soda.

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.

It really has nothing to do about how the fish are raised, and
everything to do about how quickly you raise water parameters - that's
why you ensure that you raise water properties such as pH, GH and KH
slowly to acclimatize the fish to these new conditions.
\
alot of breeders in my area don't worry about raising the hardness of their
water from what it is out of the tap. when I set up my tank, I raised the gh
and kh to around 200ppm, where it's only around 50ppm out of the tap. so I
was throwing in my fish from fairly soft water to very hard. this is what I
was getting at..