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I used to have a very small fish tank (can be seen in this older question), and finally upgraded it to much bigger tank, moving the fish into it.

In the old, small tank, the fish used to hover a lot, seeking food, and consumed the grains almost as soon as they were given to them. However now in the new tank, they don't reach the top anymore, and stay deep inside the water most of the time.

The grains of food float on the surface and the fish don't reach upwards to get them even hours later:

fish tank with grains floating

You can see the grains of food floating in the front left, and the fish far below.

Is there any way to "lure" the fish to swim upwards and eat their food? Or different type of food that won't float? As far as I could see, goldfish food is only in the form of grains, which always float.

lila
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Shadow Wizard Love Zelda
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    What are the water parameters of the tank? – SerenaT Mar 24 '21 at 11:55
  • @SerenaT what do you mean by "water parameters"? – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda Mar 24 '21 at 11:56
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    Ammonia, nitrite etc. – SerenaT Mar 24 '21 at 13:57
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    No appetite and lethargy in a fish like goldfish is a sign that something is at least moderately wrong, if not seriously wrong with its health. Please measure the concentration of ammonia, nitrites, pH and nitrates and include the results in your question. Please include the information: how have you sanitized the water before filling aquarium with it? Did you use water conditioner with dechlorinator, did you use tap water or well water or reverse osmosis water? Could you include some close-up photos of the goldfish, especially the gills? Are the gills bright-red, tan-brown, or else? Thanks. – lila Mar 24 '21 at 20:05
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    If you dumped out the water from the old tank and filled the new tank with fresh water, the fish are currently poisening themselves. They have no toilet to discard waste, the waste gets absorbed into the water and poisons the fish. Please read this question for more information. If you have any neighbor or friend with a fish tank, ask them for some water from their tank to kickstart your new tank. Some pet shops also sell cycled water or aquarium starters. – Elmy Mar 24 '21 at 20:08
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    And stop feeding your fish right now or the surplus food increases the problem even more. Your fish won't starve if they get less food for a few days, but they will die of ammonia poisoning if you doin't act very quickly now. – Elmy Mar 24 '21 at 20:11
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    I am sure that the floating-grain form of the food is not the problem and changing to different food type (flakes, etc.) won't solve this. Healthy fish spend most of their waking time searching for food and consuming whatever is at least remotely edible; they are opportunistic feeders. – lila Mar 24 '21 at 20:15
  • What is the problem with this unacc✱pted a✱swer? A few essential clarification requests had been posted in the comments, none of which had been met with your response; the only problem I could see with the existing a✱swer is that it is a bit generalized - but that is only because your question itself is generalized. Information about your water parameters was absolutely required to give you any a✱swer more specialized than the existing one. Please improve your 0% acc✱pt r✱te. – lila May 12 '21 at 22:53
  • @lila please fix your keyboard it's really hard to read with random ✱ appearing in the comment. Anyway, I didn't know how to handle such a water tank, so I moved the fish back to their previous container (mentioned in a past question), but sadly it was too late; They didn't eat while there and died after couple of days. It's all my bad, I also apologized to my kids, I wasn't aware water tank need so much attention. I brought different kind of fish for now, and know to ask before making a major move. If you think the question and answer have no value to others, I don't object deleting it. – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda May 13 '21 at 12:39
  • Oh I understand, thank you for your response and I am sorry for your loss. And sorry for my tone, maybe it was too harsh, but we just have a problem with unaccepted answers in this SE. And it is not up to me to decide to delete this, and in my opinion it should not be deleted; I just think it would had been better with more details. – lila May 13 '21 at 21:59
  • @lila well, in the main meta (Meta Stack Exchange) the common opinion is that accepting answers isn't as important as people used to think, that's why they removed the whole concept of acceptance rate. Upvotes have more meaning than acceptance, as the focus should be on the quality of the contents, more than on whether it helped the specific person who asked the question. Back to our case here, I don't think I can accept the answer since I didn't really follow any of the advices given there. Maybe I can post self answer with what I said in the previous comment? What do you think? – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda May 15 '21 at 14:57
  • Okay I understand; I was coming from the point of view that in this case it is not the answer's author's fault that it does not solve the problem, but I have to admit that actually this is not anybody's fault after all. I think self-answering is great idea, I did not think about this before; it will be a good compromise because it will explicitly mark this question as "solved"; thanks. – lila May 16 '21 at 03:35

1 Answers1

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To put all the comments into an answer: You probably forgot to cycle your tank. That's a mistake many fish owners do because pet shops neglect to tell them about it.

What "cycling" is and how it works is described in this very detailed answer: How does one effectively “cycle” an aquarium?.

Fish becoming lethargic and either sinking to the bottom or gasping at the surface of the water is a sign that they feel ill. The most likely reason why they feel ill is that there's something toxic in the water. What exactly that something toxic is can be measured with aquarium water tests. The good news is that your new tank is big enough for your fish. The water volume can buffer a certain amount of toxins and makes partial waterchanges easier.

The second reason for this behavior is shock. If you take fish out of their usual water and dump them into completely different water, they need time to adapt. That's another reason why you should transfer water from your old tank to the new one. For more information, please read this question.

Since the cycling of water is done by bacteria, a first aid measure for an uncycled tank is to add either some water or an old filter medium from an already cycled tank. That "transplants" the beneficial bacteria into your new tank. Many pet shops also sell cycled water or "aquarium starters".

If none of those solutions are available to you, you need to lower the toxin levels in your water by doing partial water changes each day until the tank is cycled. Don't change more than 20% of the water volume at once to avoid shocking your fish again.

If your tap water is chlorinated, you absolutely must dechlorinate it before putting it in the tank. The chlorination is meant to kill bacteria in the water, but it also causes chemical burns on the gills of fish and suffocates them.

Since you seem to have no living plants in your aquarium, you may get too many algae in the future. There's no need to panic now, I just want to make you aware of it in case it happens. Please read this question for more information.

lila
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Elmy
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