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putting dead-looking fish pics under spoiler tags because it's upsetting i think  what the gently caress is happening to my catfish (plural)????? this is the third one in two months. this one is not dead yet but i know it's coming. both pics are of the same fish, it swam around a bit after the first pic and ended up in the corner. it looks like they have a dent in their chest area between the pectoral and pelvic fins. it looks... deflated. this one can only swim in spirals and then just gives up and lays on the bottom, like the other two i lost.  my tetras are fine, my betta is fine. i don't know if the betta is doing anything to the catfish; i haven't personally witnessed aggression and she hangs out with the tetras more often anyway.all the ones that have died were the offspring of my original three; the oldest one (seven! years!) is still fine.
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Jun 27, 2018 02:25
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Applebees Appetizer posted:
Not particularly surprising. Store plants are sometimes fertilized and exist in a somewhat clean environment, if they're even grown submerged in the first place. Aaaaaand gently caress....been a while since I put anything in the tank. The last were the shrimp. This morning I spotted a snail scooting up the glass. SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 12:58
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The snails have struck a hard blow to my crinum calamistratum: I cannot believe that the lovely pest snails are out-reproducing the Malayasian trumpets, and now they're pruning my loving plants at the base. I don't want to go scorched earth but I'm getting pretty close.
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Jun 27, 2018 13:07
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Assassin snails
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Jun 27, 2018 13:10
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Oh yeah, they're top of the list. I just worry because I also have nerites and I don't want them to become relatively expensive snacks.
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Jun 27, 2018 13:53
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The Snoo posted:what the gently caress is happening to my catfish (plural)????? I believe the deflated look is how most of my panda corys that died in/shortly after shipping looked. I suspect that since they are little firm structures of bony overlapping plates, there aren't many places that can sink in. I don't know if it's wasting or if it just goes like that when they're sick, or if they're like that all along and we never really see it until they're way upside down. It's easy to suspect dirty substrate or parasites when the affected fish are bottom dwellers, but this doesn't fit with the idea of an established tank where only some fish are affected, and besides your substrate looks okay to me. The cory death spiral is heartbreaking though and I've never seen a cory recover from that condition Wish I had some more ideas, obviously you'd rather know what the issue is so you can treat or correct it but its bad to just start throwing stuff into a tank hoping something will work. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to feed your tank some medicated anti-worms food?
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Jun 27, 2018 14:06
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Stoca Zola posted:I believe the deflated look is how most of my panda corys that died in/shortly after shipping looked. I suspect that since they are little firm structures of bony overlapping plates, there aren't many places that can sink in. I don't know if it's wasting or if it just goes like that when they're sick, or if they're like that all along and we never really see it until they're way upside down. It's easy to suspect dirty substrate or parasites when the affected fish are bottom dwellers, but this doesn't fit with the idea of an established tank where only some fish are affected, and besides your substrate looks okay to me. The cory death spiral is heartbreaking though and I've never seen a cory recover from that condition i see the undersides of my catfish occasionally when they shimmy up the sides of the tank  and i feel like they usually look plump/rounded in a good way. but this look felt off to me, i don't know.i can't find the sick and/or dead fish. we spent 10 minutes looking for them. their bellies are bright and they're pretty big while everything in the tank is black/green/brown, i have no idea where it could've gone in ~12 hours. we're definitely only seeing 8 catfish, though.any suggestions on anti-worm food? i've never had to treat my tank for anything (besides tearing it down for S N A I L S) e: my betta looks like she got some bloat  assuming it was overeating bc i tossed a bit of food in this morning to make my catfish gather but whyyyyyyyyyyyy
snoo fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 16:56
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If I was going to worm my catfish I'd do it with something mixed into gel food like Repashy, but you might be able to just buy medicated granules depending on where you are (Jungle brand do anti-parasite stuff I think). Better if you don't have to try and calculate dosages yourself. I'm just thinking another reason they could have sunken bellies is if they had diarrhea (and honestly, I've never seen a cory poop so I don't even know what that would look like) and that could be due to bacterial causes. Just really hard to say what is going on when only some fish are affected. Bad news if the dead one is missing, if there is a pathogen involved it will now be all over your tank instead of contained within the fish. It's a good practice to isolate sick fish, especially if they look extra rough, just to make removal easier and stop anyone from munching on the corpse and spreading the problem. Even if you float them in a container in the tank its better than losing them somewhere. Looking back over your posts trying to find a recent pic of your tank for ideas, and I see your first poor cory passed away early May around the time of some overheating, then more late May when you had an exterminator and moved the tank outside for safety, but then they all look so healthy in that video you posted My only clues from looking back is that during these events they may have become stressed enough to pick up some bacterial disease which has been brewing since. I don't think they were hot enough to really hurt them though; so maybe the heat just added to a preexisting problem? Same with bucket time stress? My biggest concern would be anything residual in the house from having exterminators in; scaleless fish like corys have more potential to absorb stuff through their skin and that could be why it is affecting them and not anyone else (yet). Similarly it could be something else in the water, not necessarily from the exterminators but something in your supply that could affect them. I didn't see enough from the video you posted to guess where a dying cory might hide, though. Might be worth grabbing some carbon and sticking that in your filter (or replacing any you already have) and hoping if there is anything nasty in the water the carbon can pull it out. It's all blind guessing though! I really hope you don't lose more. I've been talking my sister through preparing her new tank to move her fish across from the old tiny one; I loaned her my ammonium chloride to start cycling the filter, gave her some plants, got her to transfer filter media from the old tank; and everything seemed to be going well. However she decided to float the fish in a container in the new tank to equalise temperature/water before final transfer and this gave one of her 3 rasboras the opportunity to take a giant leap to "freedom". He smashed on the tile floor and broke something important and did not survive despite her efforts to get him back in water. Flipped upside down and stopped even moving his fins so she ended up putting him out of his misery. Her big peppered cory tried to take a leap too but luckily stayed inside the tank. She has had him for so many years now, I suspect he's older than her youngest kid and she is very attached and would be devastated to lose him. The two remaining rasboras absolutely love the new tank even though it is brightly lit compared to the old one, and depending on how things go I might give her some of mine to even out the school to a proper size; I have 4 brevibora cheeya which look the same size and species as her rasboras (and not the same as the little lampeyed dorsiocellata that I have 5 of). Peppy the cory hides under the plants all day but roams around and seems quite happy once the lights go out. I am hoping he will come out of his shell with some sterbai corys for company. With her old tiny tank vacated, she gave it a reasonable clean out and water change and is using it as a quarantine for her new fish. We went shopping for some this afternoon and she ended up coming home with 7 pristella tetras as they were still alive and kicking after a week at the fish store. They're quite tiny so I think they will do fine temporarily in the tiny tank and I couldn't see any sign of ich or finrot on them so hopefully they all pull through. Not entirely sure whether the rasboras will school with, bully or ignore these guys. If they prove to behave well once the tetras go in, that's when I'll give her my odd ones. I want to try again to get more dorsiocellata and she definitely has room in her tank for a few more top level fish. The pristella tetras seem to go all over the tank, in a loose darting school and I think they will look really nice when they're bigger. Not that they don't look nice now, they're just tiny! Only a little bigger than a thumbnail. The new tank so far:  Peppy is not visible, under the mess of plants to the right, and the rasboras are also on the right near those plants. Most of the leafy plants are fake plants. The new fish:  That old tank is still a mess of algae but it's all part of the biofiltration I guess! We did a 15 min acclimation of tipping tank water into their bag, and then at the end tipped them into a net and into the tank. They were exploring the tank looking for food within seconds, schooling nicely, no single fish acting weird or hanging to the side so I have high hopes that this time she will be able to keep them alive. I'm hoping I can encourage my sister to go really slow and not buy more and more and more fish; she was talking about grabbing some guppies as well but I talked her out of it, since there will always be guppies and she can always buy them and add them later (hopefully much much later when the tank is more mature). She has had so many fish tank problems over the years due to overstocking, inappropriate and sickly fish, I really hope this time picking sturdier fish and taking things slow she will have a much better fish keeping experience. As for me, I am going to give away a bunch of my babies to the friend with a 6 foot tank on Saturday. Initially I was only going to give her 6 or 8, but then I was thinking I would rather see a big school of 10 zooming around the bottom of her tank; and even better if it was a school of 15 or 20. So however many I manage to catch, that's what I will give her.
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Jun 27, 2018 18:28
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I'm phone posting so I'm gonna try to get all my thoughts organized well enough lol we found the catfish under one of the driftwood pieces in a way that I really don't understand, I had to tilt it forward and the fish was underneath a portion that had pretty much full contact with the substrate. so, no idea how it got there, but we got the fish out. I did take some more photos of the now dead catfish that I'll upload later. after examining my alive catfish doing their up-the-glass shimmy, the weird stomach thing is more pronounced in both the dead and dying catfish. otherwise nothing looks wrong at all. into the tomato plant bucket they go.  I changed out the carbon in the filter and did a small water change to gradually raise the water temperature about 1°F and remove my hand oils from the top of the water after having to be in elbow-deep. again I'm phone posting so: I'm not entirely sure I had said that I had problems with overheating; my concern was the tank being too cold because we keep the apartment cool for our rats and also for our comfort. the apartment is usually around 68 degrees, sometimes colder because the bedroom heats up fast but the living room where the aquarium is can sometimes be colder. my thermometer in the tank has been saying the water is between 70-72 lately so while that's on the low end of the safe zone, it's not dangerously cold. I am terrified of using a heater but I might have to invest in one and run it kinda supervised once in a while. all the fish would be happier with it closer to 75 I'd think. when they were in the bucket, the water was even colder because the only place I could keep the bucket safely was on the table near like 2 AC vents. I did close the vents but the bucket was still around 68 degrees most of the time. this was definitely stressful for them because of the small amount of space and the cold. the exterminators just put poo poo in a few holes and placed solid bait in other places, and I don't believe they sprayed in the living room. I think my rats would've died first from it if there was any. I want to say that I feel this is happening bc the colder water makes them more susceptible to WHATEVER is going on. back when the tank temp would drop when I had it at my parents' place, though, they would just lay eggs. around the same time problems started happening, the apartment management or w/e has had the water pipes outside replaced and worked on in a couple spots that caused our water to be shut off and I am hoping there isn't some kind of contamination, though I assume I'd be seeing problems in all the fish and not just one catfish at a time. I really appreciate you trying to figure this out with me. it's upsetting to suddenly be having so many issues with the hardiest of my fish. I'm enjoying watching my catfish because they're so drat cute and I want them to be okay I'll see what kinds of treatment are available around here and try to get some this week.
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Jun 27, 2018 19:46
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I don't think corydoras mind cold temperatures that much either; quick google suggests that 68F is adequate but at the bottom of their range. I think you're right that we can rule out the exterminators, but the information about work being done on your pipes is pretty interesting; disturbed pipes could knock all kinds of weird build up into the tap water, any residue of solvents from joining pipes together if they used PVC and glued it, could cause problems. I don't really know but its definitely something that has changed at around the same time that your problems started, and again its the kind of thing that could affect corys first due to their lack of scales. Anything they can absorb through their skin, they get a full body dose, instead of a much smaller dose that a scaled fish would have. They might all be affected but they're going one by one maybe because of size, age, one was stressed more than another, who knows. It takes something really big and obvious to kill a bunch of fish at once so I'm not surprised they're not all affected at the same time. Whatever happened with your pipes may have only been minor and not expected to cause problems ie if you drank or showered in the water yourself, which is probably why you weren't told to beware of anything, but corys can be more easily affected by such things. If your water conditioner works to remove metals you could add more of it than usual (not sure if they all do but the one I use says it does), and I think fresh carbon should pick up metals and other contaminants anyway. As for your hidden cory, he might have dug his way under the wood looking for a quiet place to go. I'm glad you found him because you don't need more pollution in your tank right now.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:24
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My son and I discovered another pond filled with TONS of tropical fish, all kinds of different mollys and cichlids from what I could tell. The hand net is too slow to catch them, so I'm going to get a cast net and go back in the next few days, will take some pics of what we catch and report back, should be lots of fun my son is all excited 
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Jun 27, 2018 23:43
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Anyone know how I would go about packaging the Monto Carlo trimmings I take from my tank for resale? Not sure on the best method here....
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Jun 28, 2018 01:58
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w00tmonger posted:Anyone know how I would go about packaging the Monto Carlo trimmings I take from my tank for resale? Not sure on the best method here.... Everything I ever got plant wise was either packed in a plastic bag wet or was put in a full on fish bag with water. Then just pad with newspaper or something
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Jun 28, 2018 09:45
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Between pieces of wet paper towel, doublebagged for waterproofing, then boxed? I've had plants sent in bubblewrap type padded envelopes too, which sometimes have been fine and sometimes they got crushed. The critical thing is keeping plants moist, preventing that moisture from leaking out during shipping, and container rigidity or some other method to prevent crush damage.
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Jun 28, 2018 10:07
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Bought some red cherry shrimp today to add into the tank. After months of the darwin algae dudes doing nothing much of anything I'll be interested to see what the cherry's do in the tank. Compared to the guys in there they are tiny but I'm sure they'll grow bigger with time. In other news I had to of my Oto's go but have't found any remnants of them. I only noticed them gone cause the number when I feed zucchini has decreased. I think the copies probably got rid of the remains but I got a couple more today cause I kinda like them being in the tank. I would have got another female honey gourami but they had none of any description and while they had a stack of other different gourami's I don't think they'd work with the pair that are in there atm cause they seem fairly chummy but not yet at the breeding stage.
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Jun 28, 2018 11:02
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Eh, shrimp kinda clean things and keep them clean. If you've got mad algae they're not gonna do a whole lot except remove some of the stuff algae uses to multiply. You'd be better off just having less light and keeping up on water changes. Maybe even getting some fast growing plants to compete with it. Aside from that they're neat to watch, especially when it's sexy time because all the males go into a panic and swim all over the place I guess today I can finally say I've had some good luck with vals. A few of mine I gave another try are sending out stringers and two others have grown long enough to reach the water surface. My two bulb plants have gone friggen crazy too. Looking forward to them flowering at this rate
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Jun 28, 2018 19:49
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I got my co2 regulator "fixed" turns out I didn't have it tight when connecting it to the co2 tank. Plants are doing better already. Picture of a scarlet badis hanging in the moss. edit: Just saw a preview for this program and it looks interesting. Mentions sakura shrimp for eating. Mt. Fuji Aqua Journey https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/special/episode/201806300810/ r0ck0 fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 03:39
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Could my algae issues be due to my 0.1 mg/L of iron in my water? My well water has very low metals otherwise (no copper or lead, does have manganese though) and a good hardness. May switch to a 75-25 mix of RO water and well water and condition that to see if there is any improvement. I really should have finished reading 'Ecology of the Planted Aquarium' before doing all this, instead of during... And finally got some critters to put in, so, presenting my extremely high-tech and well-tuned acclimation system! 
Mozi fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 14:54
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I havent been following too closely, but how long has your tank been established for? Could be any number of things, but I find that getting plants well established is a big one for me. Too much light, nutrients, etc can all cause algae issues. Lowering light period is a big one, andi find getting plants to root in goes a long way Im not sure if it's specifically the iron, but an imbalance of nutrients in the water supply would definitely do it w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 19:43
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Probably was too much light and nutrients, then I used Excel which hurt the plants I was trying to establish. I think I'm losing the cryptocorne but the others should make it out OK. Plus these snails and shrimp and crabs are going to town on all this algae right now so at least they're happy to see it.
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Jun 29, 2018 22:13
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My new fish came today. 7 Emperor tetras that are fun as hell to watch. Dropping food in it turns into a big frenzy as they do their little darting in to bite and back out before they all head up to peck at whatever's still floating. Also got a Bamboo shrimp who promptly took over the Cholla log nearest the filter and food bowl and spends his time alternating between munching on the food for the cherry shrimp and filtering the water flow. And finally, a Twig Catfish that....sits on everything. Seriously though they look freakin' neat. Got some veggies to blanch and drop in once he gets used to his new home. Wish my phone took better pics so I could upload them, though backed out it takes a decent pic of the tank 
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Jun 30, 2018 01:59
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So I think one of the wild mollys is giving birth, two little babies showed up out of nowhere  Also two of the mollys are showing signs of ICK what do I do? 
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Jun 30, 2018 22:47
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Today I rehomed about 25-30 sterbai corydoras between my sister and her friend who has a six foot tank. It was the first time I've moved a lot of sterbai at once so initially I was worried about their potential to stress out and release toxins into the bucket during transport. I decided to use a media sock with the last of my carbon in the bucket to hopefully reduce any toxicity and I also put an aged katappa leaf in for them to hide under. I think I will get some plants in return trade but I forgot to organise that at the time! Transportation was successful and so was doing the tank transfer, in the six foot tank I wanted to add more as I've seen how much trouble they have finding each other in my 5 foot tank at home. By the time I'd added the last Cory, the first one had located an existing bronze Cory in the tank and was following him around. Cute! It was much the same story with the 7 that went into my sister's tank. They started work at sweeping through the sand, and her existing paleatus Cory came out of his hiding place to see what was going on. Her rasboras kept glaring at the newcomers too, I don't think they are used to seeing that much movement. I'm pleased with how well they settled in! Got home to find a new and interesting disease situation; one of my rosy barbs was swimming in crazy tight loops, as if chasing his tail. Classic Whirling Disease. I have been reading about it and it is caused by a parasitic cnidarian that only affects certain fish (cold water fish that have been raised in earthen ponds) and which attaches itself to and feeds on cartilagenous tissues. Whirling is a symptom that occurs when enough damage is done to the spine that it affects the nerves. By the time you see the fish whirling, they have been infected for a very long time and are full of spores. There is no known cure, and the disease spreads by killing it's host and releasing the spores which are then eaten by worms or other tank life, which are then eaten by fish thus infecting them. It's one of the diseases that feeding live tubifex worms can spread. In any case, this isn't a new fish and live tubifex are not available here. I'm pretty sure this particular fish has never been near an earthen pond. So where did the disease come from? I have a pretty good idea about that too. The parasites get into young fish and do the most damage when their bones are cartilage and have not yet ossified into hard adult bones  While many fish carry the spores with no visible sign, this cartilage damage can result in bent spines, deformed skulls and shortened gill plates. Of my three original rosy barbs, one grew up to have shortened gill plates. And my sister gave them to me because she saw them eating the fourth one she had, which had died. They were sold to her as feeder fish, which are highly likely to have been bred en masse in an outdoor pond somewhere before being shipped here. And the barbs that I raised from the eggs that they laid, many have bent spines (from slightly to drastically), shortened gill plates, and one has a distinctly deformed skull (he has a short face like a bulldog), though over half look pretty normal. So the evidence does fit that at least some of these barbs have been carrying it for a very long time and probably all of them.I can't find much information about which species are susceptible as most data seems to focus on salmon and trout but the take away idea is that it's very rare in pet tropical fish as tanks are too warm usually and people don't feed live tubifex that often any more, and it has never been seen that a catfish species has been infected with this parasite. So I think my platydoras and corys are safe but I'm not sure about the guppies in that tank. It may have gotten much worse lately as this has been a bitterly cold winter here, and I was already running the tank a bit cooler. The temperature might be getting too low at night lately. Anyway my guppy disaster tank never happened, the die offs stopped after a week or so, but now I'm thinking I might have a barb apocalypse instead. Not sure if I should just euthanize the lot, or separate them away like I did for the plague panda corys and wait for them to die. Speaking of, I've been running the plague panda tank in semi black water for probably a couple of months now, with all the tannins from the katappa leaves making the water quite dark and now the fins seem to be growing back on the Cory that I was sure would die. She even laid three viable eggs yesterday which I removed to a breeder box, by tonight they still looked fine and not fungused. These guys might actually pull through, after all this time! I might be able to set up a school of 5 corys in that tank, still don't trust enough to mix them with my heathy population.
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Jun 30, 2018 23:20
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Applebees Appetizer posted:So I think one of the wild mollys is giving birth, two little babies showed up out of nowhere Salt and heat, many gravel vacuums. Or ich-x or similar. If you want your plants to stay alive check every medication label before using in a planted tank, some will kill plants and many will stain things. There's lots of decent info online on how to nuke ich and as long as you catch it early it is not too bad to cure and possible you won't lose any fish.
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Jun 30, 2018 23:26
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So, never had a tank do this before for this long. Established tank, Phosphate is 2.0ppm, Ammonia is 0. Going to go out and buy a new Nitrate kit because mine is all used up, so I don't know what the Nitrate is. I'm trying to figure out if this is a bacterial bloom, algae bloom, or both. That tank is in a fairly bright room but as you can see there is another tank next to it that is clear. This is my first attempt at using sand as a substrate. Maybe there are some dead zones in the sand releasing nasty poo poo?  Any ideas?
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Jun 30, 2018 23:39
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It's nice when I get to catch up with this thread, but it's a real shame that most of the posts have been sad ones lately. I hope things improve for the folk that've had some trouble. Bulky Bartokomous posted:So, never had a tank do this before for this long. Established tank, Phosphate is 2.0ppm, Ammonia is 0. Going to go out and buy a new Nitrate kit because mine is all used up, so I don't know what the Nitrate is. I'm trying to figure out if this is a bacterial bloom, algae bloom, or both. That tank is in a fairly bright room but as you can see there is another tank next to it that is clear. This is my first attempt at using sand as a substrate. Maybe there are some dead zones in the sand releasing nasty poo poo? I've had something like this before and it was basically just an algae issue, though I can't guarantee that's what you have. It's not hard to clear up, but it can take some time. Our tank actually did this while we were away this month, but my parents were fortunately able to clear it up for us almost completely before we got back. Regular water changes and cleaning the glass can do the trick, but there's some heavier stuff if your pH is alright. schwein11 posted:They're 3 and 6 and have been pretty good about the pond so far (not throwing toys or themselves in, for example), and understand that fish have to be fed in moderation due to the betta fish we've had for a while. I don't know whether introducing another food source will make them reliant on that and uninterested in the algae? They'll definitely still be into the algae, but I recommend introducing another food source as well. Goldfish eat basically anything (as you'll discover if you want to introduce any more plants to your pond), but algae also isn't very nutritious for them. Repashy makes some pretty good goldfish food, and it's easy to make. Also, I really dig the pond, but make sure to give it some time before introducing any more fish. Goldfish are pretty aggressive breeders.  And speaking of breeders, these four have been causing me a lot of stress. I remember when I first took over caring for my partner's fish and multiple people told me that as pond animals, they won't grow large or breed in a tank. I've obviously intended to keep increasing the tanks as they grow, but I didn't anticipate this fervor inside the tank. I always feel really bad for the two females, especially the bigger one. I used to put my hand to the tank to draw the oldest male's attention away from Lotus--the oldest female--and now she keeps coming up to me, trying to get my attention during a chase. At this point, I'm considering just increasing the tank size and introducing another female into the mix to adjust the balance a little. Right now it's 50/50 for male and females. I'd consider separating them, but my room's constant temperature gives them a perpetual Summer so it'd have to be a permanent solution. We saw this behaviour during the Winter, though it's really taken off with the second male maturing. Our Summer's really not making this easy for me though. My city has literally never had temperatures like this before and I never thought I'd live to see the day Scotland was at risk of a drought.  These two are the males in question. Seriously though, it's ridiculous how fast these guys are growing. They're all easily bigger than the oldest fish at this point.  I mean, this was the two oldest about a year ago. It makes me feel pretty bad for how stunted Lotus is. e: Just a dumb typing mistake. CrashScreen fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 1, 2018 01:44
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^ Can confirm, goldfish eat everything. My old shubies ate all the moss balls and even chewed up the new leaves off the pothos if it dipped below the water line....never the mature leaves though. The biggest issue I had with them was they were just dirty. My filters would gum up in a week from them Applebees Appetizer posted:So I think one of the wild mollys is giving birth, two little babies showed up out of nowhere Like the other poster said, salt and heat. Mollies are a brackish fish so it won't hurt. Don't do like my mom did years ago and use table salt, it burns/kills the fish SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Jul 1, 2018 |
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Jul 1, 2018 02:56
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Two of the recent mollys I just caught on friday died, but the ones that have been there for awhile (six of them) are still alive  I'm gonna go to the fish store and get some salt then put the heater in, I haven't been using it because the ambient temps have been fine, right around 78 degrees. I'm assuming once the ick goes away I can turn off the heater of again?
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Jul 2, 2018 00:04
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Heat alone will make the ich grow faster until to the point where it starts killing the ich. You should regularly vacuum the substrate to remove the ich cysts that will fall in there, this will reduce the burden while you are waiting for them to die from the salt. As with anything in fish keeping, make gradual changes, so ramp the temperature up slowly then bring it back down slowly at the end of treatment. Same with salt concentration. Good luck!
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Jul 2, 2018 01:07
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I had some good news from a fish biologist/hobbyist that I emailed about what precautions are required for my whirling barbs - he reckons is not necessary to cull and shouldn't affect other fish in the tank, probably not even if they ate a dead fish. From the dead fish stage of the life cycle the parasite must swap hosts to worms, and then from worms it can only infect fish fry. So it isn't likely to spread particularly easily from tank to tank either. If there are no worms in the tank, the parasite can't spread. If there are no fry in the tank, the parasite can't spread. And it's pretty easy to tell when a fish is on its way out as they start swimming very erratically (spoilered potentially distressing footage, not my fish but exactly the same) whirling fish I think what I will do is put the barb community idea I had on hold and just let these barbs live out their days. I'll take the guppies out in case anything is going on with their fry and just wait and see what happens with the rest of the fish.
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Jul 2, 2018 09:42
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I had ich in a tank with dojo loaches and a ton of plecos. No salt possible. I did water changes every day and bumped the temp up to about 87* for three weeks. Haven't seen ich since. Hope the fuckers are cured now!
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Jul 2, 2018 14:07
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Have a tank setup question... So I have this tank, which has a hidden area in the back with the filter and pump. You can see the opening to the back here, behind the wisteria:  The opening is small enough for my dwarf shrimp and micro crabs to get through and I found a crab back there already when cleaning the filter. However, I do not believe they are in any danger there, as the pump itself is after the main filter (which is after the sponge) which they can't get through. It's really quite a safe dark little area with plenty of food. My concern is if maybe they grow, they won't be able to exit again. I could glue some sponge material over the entrance to keep them from getting back there, but that could lead to some maintenance questions. Also I know there is a cost in stress as I keep screwing around with the tank and would prefer to just let it ride for a little while. So I think I'l just let them go where they want to go, and when cleaning the filter I'll stick the siphon back there and relocate any individuals back to the front at that point. Seems reasonable? Just that when you can't find all your shrimps, you mind starts to wonder where they might have gotten to... Mozi fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 3, 2018 |
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Jul 3, 2018 21:28
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I don’t know what it’s like behind the opening, but could you stuff a piece of fairly coarse foam down there? A piece big enough that it fills the whole area and is pressing flush against the opening from the inside. That way it stops shrimps from going right in but won’t impede flow or clog easily. Hard to say what’s possible without knowing what’s in there. I can’t think of a foolproof way to cover it from the front, maybe black knitting mesh and use super glue gel since it’s aquarium safe and can be used underwater. A mesh fine enough to stop shrimplets going in may impede flow though.
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Jul 4, 2018 02:06
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If its what I'm thinking of, it's just a giant block of coarse foam. My setup is sort of like that. What i did was place a green scour pad between the plastic and the filter. Its fine enough to block most shrimp. You will have to clean it though because it'll clog up faster.
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Jul 4, 2018 02:24
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Thought the new shrimp I added last week had been eaten along the way. Turns out they buried themselves in the moss and cause it’s super dense it’s hard to see them. I’ve seen two of the 8 but the rest are probably elsewhere in the moss just hanging out. The otos don’t seem to mind being out and about which is nice cause the last guys where so reclusive I didn’t notice them go among the plants and no bodies ever appeared anywhere in the tank.
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Jul 4, 2018 11:07
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I'm in the market for new filters. My old HOBs are getting old and rattling pretty bad no matter what I do. So I thought about doing an overhead sump, but I'm afraid it would block too much light. I'm gonna give those Odyssea HOB canister filters a whirl. I mean for 35 bucks, why not right? I also have an under substrate filter and I'm getting kinda tired at looking at the uplift tubes. I'm planning on getting some plastic mesh and christmas moss and have the moss grow up the tubes to blend them in. The stuff I tied to the Cholla wood looks awesome, like having small bushes and the shrimp love it. Even the bamboo shrimp has made his new home in the log with the moss on it. He comes out and climbs up on the filter intake sponge, eats his fill, then goes back and kicks everyone out to hide inside SocketWrench fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jul 4, 2018 |
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Jul 4, 2018 15:49
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Synthbuttrange posted:If its what I'm thinking of, it's just a giant block of coarse foam. My setup is sort of like that. What i did was place a green scour pad between the plastic and the filter. Its fine enough to block most shrimp. You will have to clean it though because it'll clog up faster. I'll see if I can do that, if I can attach something to the removable cartridge that has the foam and filter so it's pressing against the opening from behind, then it'll be easy to clean, for sure... I had been thinking of cutting a thin piece of foam and supergluing that over the front but over time I could see that getting gross.
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Jul 4, 2018 16:20
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The plague panda cory has laid some more eggs for me! She did 3 a few days ago, which I think I posted about, and 7 more today that I could see. I moved them to a breeder box so I can keep a better eye on them, so far the first three are no longer stuck on the side and I can't see any fungus in the box. So that could be a successful hatching? Can't tell because the box has leaf litter for fry to hide under. The new eggs today also look viable so fingers crossed I get some baby pandas! Not much going on in these eggs yet, but they look fine to me.  Compared to sterbai eggs that were laid an unknown amount of time ago, you can see the spine of the fish forming in a loop around inside the egg.  I think the camera and zoom were the same distance and settings for both pictures so you can see how much bigger the panda eggs are; it's really surprising. They are very similar visually to a dead dried duckweed leaf stuck to the glass (apart from they are round, not oval). I stuck an old webcam lens on the front of my phone for these pics so they are not the best quality but you get the idea of the size. The whitish shape in the centre of the sterbai egg pic is a copepod, just chilling on the glass. Just thinking, since the eggs are so much bigger, surely any fry from the first 3 eggs would also be bigger? I might have a look with a torch to see if I can see any suspiciously large fry. I bought a big piece of driftwood, took cuttings from some plants that I think will work and now I think I have everything I need to set the cube tank up, just in time for term break to give me a chance to get stuck into it. I have been thinking about it this evening and I am starting to lean towards filling that tank full of pandas (especially if I am able to breed a few more) and moving my sterbais into the 5 foot tank instead. From the point of view of tank footprint, the cube is only 4 sq feet, but the 5 foot tank is more like 8 sq feet which is better for a bigger cory. My current panda accommodations are close enough to 2.5 sq feet so the cube would be an upgrade for them, and that would leave me with 4 trilineatus in the 2.5 sq feet, and an opportunity to build that school up to a bit bigger size. At four fish, even with the company of pandas, they are terribly shy and I only ended up with all these sterbai because the online fish store sent me the wrong species by mistake, I just wanted more trilineatus. A goal for next term break perhaps, its definitely too cold to be shipping fish right now.
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Jul 5, 2018 18:32
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I have this recurring issue, an infestation of sorts, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to stop it shy of killing my fish or destroying my aquarium loving Germans again 
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Jul 6, 2018 14:07
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One of my driftwoods sits on the other piece I have like it's riding a pony! It's really stable. I was just going to use the one twisty piece but decided maybe it needed more height. The twisty piece of goldvine has a concave underside which I was thinking would work as a cave, but the piece of malaysian driftwood underneath which is propped up on one end by rocks makes for a much better bit of shelter I think. I'll probably tie java fern windelov on the goldvine.  SocketWrench: hahaha I like it!
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Jul 6, 2018 14:18
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