Just noticed my new fish "flashing," help with diagnosis?

So, I just noticed my new little sparkling gourami is "flashing" or flicking up against the heater, and I also see that his/her gills are a bit red. This is only the second day I have had him/her, and she has been sort of shy, but I thought that was just due to being in a new tank.

This is the first fishy disease I have known about having, and it sounds like gill flukes or something like that from what I'm reading online, but was wondering if anyone had an advice on how to diagnose for sure. I don't know what meds to get until I know what it is

Could be flukes, I know red gills are also a sign of ammonia, so you might want to do a quick test to make sure you're not having an ammonia spike for some reason.

i thought the same, so i just did back to back 50% water changes as well, i will see if s/he looks better tmorrow

I'll take a double look in the overstock tank tomorrow to see if anything is going on there.

Ok, so my ammonia was not zero, which is no good... it looks like a 0.25 or less, but that's still not 0. I'm going to watch this tank very carefully the next few days, doing really good gravel vacs and water changes, because I think I might have overfed it for a while before I introduced this fish, and now ammonia is leeching out from all that food.

The gourami already looks better after back to backwater changes, swimming around more of the tank space than just next to the heater.

I'm glad I got malawa shrimp and not something sensitive, because i'm certain anything else would be dead by now haha

Aquarium Co-Op wrote:I'll take a double look in the overstock tank tomorrow to see if anything is going on there.

Yeah have a look I guess, I did notice that this guy was a little shy in there too, but I thought it was probably due to the amount of other (comparatively) big fish in the tank, just making him/her shy.

After seeing that my ammonia was not 0, I'm not sure anything is wrong with it, maybe just wrong with my caregiving

Was just doing a little more extra reading up on this species, and I didn't think of it too much before, but could PH be an issue? Mine is fairly high due to crushed coral (7.8 or so) to help shrimp with their shells, so could the gourami still be adjusting to this? I was reading that in the wild, they usually have highly acidic and soft water, but I know these came from pretty neutral PH at the store.

Will this species adjust to higher PH, or should I find another place for it? All 3 of my tanks have crushed coral for inverts, so they are all over 7...

The Gourami should adapt, if it went from a low ph to your high ph without a gradual increase, it could be a reason as to why it looks stressed.

it should adapt, but I don't think this mimics its natural environment in the least. look to where a fish comes from and take heed if you want to make it flourish rather than survive