Fish spending time near surface of water?

Question

We have a telescope and a fantail and they are both spending a lot of time at the surface of the tank (perhaps piping for the oxygenated air). They have both been doing this for a couple of months and are both still feeding well and taking journeys to the bottom of the tank to rummage through the stones. According to the testing kits, the water is within reasonable limits, but I still worry that something is amiss.

Any suggestions?

Also: the telescope started out jet black, but has now turned almost completely bright orange except for the top of his spine. What caused this? is it normal?

Answer 1

Fish dosent usually spend time in the surface of the water, but there are many ways in which the fish spend time in thhe surface area of water. These include lack of oxygen, high ammonia,nitrate or nitrite or fish stress.

The way ur fish is behaving i think it is either water quality problem or lack of oxygen. Due to high chemicals in water (ammonia, nitrates) a fish can gasp for air in the surface, these can result in ammonia poisoning or swimbladder diesease for air. What u can do is change 25% of your water weekly which will lower the chemicals. If there is no airpump in ur tank just buy 1 or u will have dead fish, for the lack of oxygen they are gasping for air which can also cause swimbladder diesease a very disgusting one. If u have an airpump try to make it high.

Its nothing just a colour change because of food they are giving colour variations and it is completely normal dont worry.

PS: Ur fish r in danger if any 1 of the problems occured pls try to cure it or u can search the internet for further search.

Answer 2

DOnt listen to her.. how mean!

And do you have something moving the water around? at the very least a bubble stone?

Does your kit test for just one thing? Or everything, sometimes the ammonia test kit sells seperately from the nitrate, nitrite kits.

= more $ for them

When is the last time you did a water change? Could be that  the bacteria have 'run a muck' so to speak.

And have multiplied into dangerous numbers... which then of course something would be off in your readings...

are you sure you have Nitrate Nitrite and ammonia test kits? What about pH? Could be too low...

What size is your tank? They may be over crowded and there is not enough oxygen to go around.

for Two goldfish you should have at least 45-50 gallons of water a 55 gallon would be good and they would be so big with such beautiful finage!

Well, I hope this helps in some shape or form.

Answer 3

although color changes occur for reasons of age or tank adaptivity....generally, orange is good

....but, a test kit may not be thoroughly accurate...so take a sample to the pet store and ask for a complimentary test of ph and ammonia (and nitrites)....it is entirely posible that the fish are seeking to breath

...although your kit may be accurate it is good to calibrate an instrument occasionally and is also good to check the validity of a kit test occasionally ( guessing is risky)

.....also if a colr changeoccurs due to stress, fish need a place to hide, rest, and relax...like in living plants

...a well planted tank is a happier tank

Answer 4

That means they are dying

Answer 5

I'm not completely sure about the top of the tank thing (they could be hungry) but the Telescope may be in spawning season and that could be the reason for the colour change.