Tiger Barbs?

Question

My boyfriend just cleaned his tank and it seemed as though he stressed out his tiger barbs pretty bad, they both in fact seem to be dead right now, we won't know for another couple minutes, but my question is -- one of them turned gray and the stripes became awfully pale. Now he is back to normal, but still floating around the surface.

I understand they both may be dead, but how come it turned pale like that?

Answer 1

Shock, one assumes you;ve used water that was not treated having come from the tap or was too cold, all fish can turn there colours on and off as they want generally its more of a reaction to stress caused by anything from a fight to something poisoning them. Much the same as a change in colour of a human being can dictate emotional or physical reactions to something.
If you pour freezing water on to your skin you will change colour as your body reacts to the temperature. If you have a liver complaint your skin looks yellow.

Answer 2

Tank cleaning can be very stressful on a fish, especially if the tank is a small one where the fish do not have a place to hide while the tank is being cleaned. If this is the case, your fish should be netted out beforehand and placed in a small container filled with water from the tank, and poured back in once the cleaning is complete. Also, cleaning properly is important - no more than 1/2 of the water should be changed. A water conditioner like Stress Coat should be added as well to remove any impurities.

Answer 3

Shocked them with either no water conditioner or temp of water was too cold or too hot! Did you change all the water or some of it? When cleaning your tank you should only remove 25%, removing too much of your water will also stress your fish!

Answer 4

you are able to could desire to commerce them in for much less agressive fish- whilst barbs are nevertheless comunity fish they prefer to chase one yet another, and 5 galleons does not provide the "victims" plenty room to swim away. you may desire to have greater suitable luck with a small college (3-5) og guppies, neons, mollies, zebra danios or some thing comparable. in case you particularly need to maintain your barbs, attempt is to place some hiding places on your tank- puppy shops sell hollow embellishes with holes for this purpose. In a pinch you are able to placed some sideways mugs to make "caves" in basic terms confirm there is not any cleansing soap on them.

Answer 5

Many types of fish go pale when stressed. Undoubtedly he forgot to remove the chlorine, or put in really cold/water water.

Answer 6

because nothing is working