When you are looking at your aquarium and your fish swimming so peacefully and enjoyably, then you might start thinking that your fish are living so peacefully. Who doesn’t feel peaceful and happy when they can swim all day in a beautiful aquarium and taken care by their owner?
Life will be so good for the fish. However, without you realize it, your fish can get stressed, too, just like you, us, humans. It might be weird to think what kind of problems make your fish stressed. Let’s talk deeper about it.
There is an interesting fact about fish you might want to know about whether your pet fish remember you: A Study Says Yes. There are some other facts about fish that are interesting to learn.
Stress for fish is a bit different with stress experienced by humans. Though it is still about physiological response, but fish experience stress because of mental or physical discomfort.
Environmental change or physical problem are mainly the causes of stress. You cannot take stress in fish easily as it may lead to serious health problems. So, get to know why your fish get stress and how to overcome it.
What Causes Fish to Get Stressed?
Stress in fish can be caused by many different factors. Here are the 3 most common causes of stress in fish.
- Water Condition
Your fish spends most of its time swimming in the water in the aquarium. If there is an uncomfortable water condition, then your fish will possibly feel it. If your fish is gasping at the surface of water, then you should immediately find out what is wrong with the water. High amount of ammonia and nitrite in the water, low oxygen supply and improper temperature of water can cause your fish to get stressed.
Cloudy water is not a good condition for your fish though, check the causes of cloudy water in aquarium.
- Trouble with Other Fish
Similar to humans, fish can also experience not getting along with others. Your fish might feel cramped once they live with too many fish or inappropriate fish that is put together in the same aquarium.
Avoid putting too many fish in your aquarium as it will create some problems, such as the water quality and competitions among the fish. In order to avoid some fish that might be aggressive, some other fish might need to hide themselves in a safe spot. Besides, try to distribute the food evenly to avoid too much competition in the aquarium.
- Others
Besides the ones mentioned before, there are some other factors that cause your fish to get stressed. The presence of chemicals or medications in the fish tank will also cause your fish to stress.
Some medications will be needed for treating sick fish, but you have to make sure that the sick one is quarantined, so it won’t affect other fish. Besides, improper diet is another factor. Make sure you feed them with the right type of food based on their need.
If you are having beta fish as a pet, you can give nutritional food to feed your beta fishes.
How to Tell that Your Fish is Stressed?
You might see your fish is swimming all the time and that’s the time you think that your fish is enjoying its life. However, there are some symptoms you might notice and discover that your fish is getting stressed. Here are the symptoms of stressed fish:
- Loss of Appetite
Similar to humans, stressed fish might not want to eat anything given. So, if you find out that the food that you feed is not eaten, then your fish might get stressed or there is something wrong with it.
- Strange Swimming
Odd swimming patterns will be noticed once your fish is stressed. If your fish is swimming without any directions, crashing the bottom of the tank or even rubbing itself to the gravel, then your fish might get stressed. You can consult to your vet to talk about this symptoms and the possible and best treatment for it.
- Gasping at the Surface
Caused by poor condition of water, you might see your fish is gasping at the surface of the water/ If you find this condition, try to check the water to see whether there is any harmful substances or lack of oxygen supply in the aquarium.
Water quality is one of the common fish tank problems. You can check how to solve the problems as well.
- Some other Symptoms
There are some other symptoms showing you that your fish is stressed. Here are the other symptoms:
- Hiding for a long time
- Darting around the tank or aquarium
- Presence of Ich – white spots on the body of the fish
What to do if Your Fish is Stressed?
There are some ways to reduce the stress level in your fish. One of them, of course, is bringing it to the vet to get the best solution to overcome the stress problem. Moreover, there are some other simple and practical ways you can do to overcome your fish stress level:
- Change the water regularly to maintain the low level of nitrite and ammonia. Clean aquarium will possibly make your fish happy and healthy.
- Make sure you maintain the temperature of the water as well.
- Hiding places are needed for your fish to avoid overcrowded situation in the aquarium. Make sure it has good oxygen flow.
- Regarding to aggression among the fish, try removing the aggressive fish from the others.
- Feed them adequate amount of food regularly.
Besides stress in fish, there is another thing you might want to know. It is about the way fish see the world. You can read it in fish point of view how this animal see the world.