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Fish not eating

Help--our fish went from eating wildly to no interest in eating. It has been almost a month since they ate normally. Eventually the food gets eaten but not like before when they (Tilapia)would break the surface and roll wildly to eat to now. We haven't changed food or anything. My water is pH 6.8, ammonia .25, Nitrite, 0 and Nitrates >40 temp 75 our system is new since Feb 2013 and we have lost only 1 of our original goldfish.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Veidel on June 18, 2013 at 7:16pm

Have you had an increase in commotion? Like having more people around than normal or a rock quarry blasting dynamite across the street? Neighbor getting some roofing done? Also, if there's anything that caused an increase in light, that could be the problem.

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Permalink Reply by Verna Gross on June 19, 2013 at 12:05am

No new fish, no change in food we buy our food from the breeder we got our fish from no neighborhood noise. Nothing has changed that is why I is so hard to figure out. They eventually eat the food but I takes a couple hours. There is plenty of fish poop so the eat just really slowly

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Permalink Reply by Alex Veidel on June 19, 2013 at 2:45pm

Hmmmmmmmmm............Oh, I remember your tank being outside. Temperature swings could be the issue. Are you making sure the water doesn't fluctuate too much from night to day?

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Permalink Reply by sticky on June 19, 2013 at 2:54pm

Do you have a lot of algae in your tank.

When i bought my tilapia, the breeder said watch the fish eat when i first put them in the tank. He said that if they don't eat very well at first they might be eating the algae in the tank. If there is a lot of algae in your tank they might be eating that and not the fish food.

Good luck

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Permalink Reply by Verna Gross on June 21, 2013 at 2:20am

Thanks for the responses. We think maybe it is a temp issue. When I feed them mid day the water temp is higher than in the am or late pm and they eat more normal. When it started to warm up --about 3 weeks ago--we shut off the tank heater and now we think that is related to the problem. The water ranged from 70-74 without the heater on and with heater it stays around 78. We turned the heater back on and I will let you know what happens.