Why Pencil fish alway stay below water surface?

[anttz]

Just added 15 golden pencil into my 4ft planted tank on Sat. No causalties yet but since yesterday about 5 of them are always staying constantly just below the water surface. One of them have swollen eye.

Other tank mates include 9 ottocat, 36 green neon, 17 golden tetra, 13 yamato.

tank is 6 mths old
PH - 6.5, KH - 5, CO2 - 2 bps

Can anyone advice??

[theodore]

My golden pencilfishes always wait below the surface when i'm near the tank - Greedy buggers. My experience with golden pencilfishes is that they are extremely hardy. Prob is that they dun seem to touch any algae (at least my rocket-tail pencilfishes pick on them once in a while) and they keep pecking my hand when i'm maintaining my tank (have to be very careful not to injure them)

You mentioned that 1 of them have a swollen eye. Chances r that ur fishes r sick (your pH and KH looks fine though). Any signs of rapid breathing / reddening gills? Loss of colour?

[bclee]

From your pH/KH, your CO2 level seemed to be quite high. pH 6.5 and KH 5 makes the CO2 level to be about 48ppm!! Please check that again. If other fishes are not at the surface, probably it is a measuring error. The ideal pH for KH 5 is about 6.8. But if your test kit reads 0.5 intervals, maybe that's explain for the reading.

Check NO2 level too.

BC

[anttz]

Theo,

There is no signs of rapid breathing / reddening gills, Loss of colour.

BC,

I'm using sera test kit, so don't think it is accurate as have to compare the result against the colour chart. So sometime a bit diffcult to judge whether it is 6-6.5 or 6.5-7

Can't re-call the actual NO2 and NO3 reading as I'm working now[]. Can only confirm it is on a safe level.

[bclee]

You mentioned that you fish have swollen eyes... opps... maybe "popeye" disease. My fish had it once... gone liao.

Can refer to Sera site. I found it quite helpful.

BC