My last rescue, Stan, has mega dark stress stripes on him. Every time I do a water change, he does this, usually lasts for a few hours. The good news is that after that time period he is back to normal, the bad news this is slowly starting to affect him. He had fin and tail rot when I got him, as well as pop eye. He is one M2, has daily water changes and IAL in the tank, but he is sooo tiny, I don't think this can be any good for him :(

Do you boil your Indian almond leaf? Make it a concentration solution like 5 cut pieces of leaves, boil in a cup of aged water. Soak it after boil until cool and then add the new water together into one gallon container. Soak the leaves together too. Makesure the temperature is 78. See if this work or not.

Yeah, I boil it, but I will have to adjust the temp on the tank! I will let you know what happens

Maybe try and get some collodial silver? Its meant to work wonders.

I have it, but I do not want to freak him out, and the few times i used it on sick fish, the flipped out so bad. How much do you suggest I use in a 1 gal?

Are you putting the actual leaves into the tank water, or boiled IAL water into the tank?

Cuz the IAL messes with the softness of the water and can majorly stress them out if you put them into straight tap water and then overload them w/IAL.

How much do you put in?

I didn't add the boiled leaf this time, because I thought maybe it was to much for him, I just added the leaf, it is like a .5"x.5" peice. I also used filtered water with a clorine chloramine remover added to it

Hmm - yeah, that should be just fine.
How's he doing now?

I would approach it differently. Why don't you try boiling the leaf in clean, aged water, mix it with a larger amount of aged water, and store it in a covered bucket. Keep this water at the same temperature as the water he's in. When it's time to do a water change, use your prepared water.

I personally think you're probably putting him through a major pH and hardness adjustment everytime you change his water. The IAL is going to condition the water quality over the course of the time it's in his container, and then no sooner is he adjusted to what the leaf is doing to the water then you take him back to the water quality BEFORE the conditioning of the IAL.

I think that's why he's stressing every time you do a water change.