flyingcow

Well she already ok'd replacing the 36 with a 55. Baby steps!

Oh I'm working on the 6' tank in the living room. That has yet to secure consensus.

...happy to oblige. I may have procured a few things for it...

Yeah, I've had pothos in a breeder box for over a year and settled right in around 10 as well. I was on travel for work for 6 months, so that limited my time to take care of the tank and also limited my time to fertilize (hence the BBA). It'll be interesting to see how the tank behaves now that I have it out for a while!

Ok now I've started reading. I never realized it was calcium oxalate a.k.a. beer stone! In a brewery, we use an acid rinse step to get rid of it. It forms on the hot side of the brewery.

Thank you! I was already planning on pulling them temporarily in order to simplify my system while solving my bba problem, but I'll look forward to puttin em back in!

Is there information on this being toxic to fish? Never heard of this before! Not trying to question you, but I have been having an issue with fish death that I'm 99% sure is parasitic, and a parasitic treatment has stopped the fish death for 6 weeks so far, but now I want to understand this better.

It's a 20 long. I started it in a 10 gallon, but the pygmys HATED IT and would freak out and hit the glass any time I moved. They are much happier with some space.

P.S. You know you live in New England when your 20 gallon tank needs 200 Watts of heaters to stay warm in the winter... Still cheaper than oil.

So I haven't posted anything here in a while! The pygmys and embers are all doing well. Somewhere along the way, I lost one ember, and who knows how many pygmy's I have. At yesterday's water change I saw 9, but they have made a cave under a rock and I left it be. Crafty lil buggers. I was away 5 days a week for work for about 6 months. That meant the tanks were getting enough work to stay alive and not much more. And since this tank was stable compared to the 36 gallon parasitic auto-da-fé in my living room, it suffered a bit. Fishies are healthy and well, but the plants are suffering a bit, and the hair algae is getting annoying. Time for a good cleaning or three, some root tabs, and actually remembering to fertilize! I tested iron, and it was basically zero. Gonna see if the tabs and easy green give me enough before dosing iron.

A quick update. I finished the 6 weeks of treatment a few weeks ago. I did lose the guy in the quarantine tank. He improved, but I couldn't get him to eat. Everyone else is doing fine and showing no symptoms. Now the goal is to take on the Blackbeard algae problem and keep this tank clean! Thank you all so much for the help, and hopefully I get to put this behind me for a while.

Bolivian Rams can be tricky if you have two males. I had this issue, and sadly the one who was bullied stopped eating and passed away before I could get a quarantine tank running. My lesson learned (which won't help you at this point) was get the dither fish first, and add cichlids in groups of three or more. My remaining ram is happy as a lark, but I'm not gonna introduce any more until he's gone.

So two and a half weeks in to this (I had to start late due to travel). Everybody is looking good. 2 big water changes a week forced me to find a corner of my tank under some rocks that was NASTY, so I'm sure that didn't hurt. The little guy in the Quarantine tank is looking a little better. No longer going upside down, but still very thin and struggling. Here's hoping he hangs on. Thanks so much for your help on this!

I'm assuming I should do this in both the main tank and the hospital tank, correct?

Very much so erratic swimming. Every now and then they spit out food. No sunken belly or lethargy. No one is really hanging out at the surface much either. I did a round of expel p with no change in his symptoms.

>50% loss of Black Neons in 18 months? The rest I think I agree with you, but that one seems steep. Also, symptoms of the current Black Phantom are identical to the last Black Neon to die.

The way I found out I needed more heat was the tank got cold on a chilly morning. If you're hitting that temperature and the house isn't gonna get colder, you're golden! You'll figure out how often to rinse as you go. You'll be able to see changes in the flow coming out of the spillway. It'll get narrower or noticeably slower.

You're already getting good stuff, but I'll chime in. You'll notice the answer to most of these is "It depends."

I haven't added anything new since I started losing fish. Although now you guys have me thinking this might not be as big an issue. So I could add some nerites back.

We were moving some furniture around a few weeks ago, and my wife found my stash. It was humiliating. "Is this a bag of rocks? How much did you spend on these?"

I haven't measured my pH recently since it really doesn't move but.. pH: 7.4-7.6 KH: 4 degrees GH: 7 degrees Now you have me wondering seeing as how all my past experiences were with a 10 gallon tank. 36 isn't too big, but it's definitely a bigger population.

Ok. In this tank I've been having a LOT of fish loss, and I'm getting to a point where I'm at a loss. So hopefully someone can give me some thoughts. Here's the parameters before this past weekend's water change: Ammonia: 0 Nitrites: 0 Nitrates: 40ppm Phosphates: ~1ppm Phosphates have always been high in this tank, and I'm fighting some pretty nasty blackbeard and staghorn algae. I don't know if this is relevant. Gravel is usually not too dirty when I gravel vac. I think the plants and algae take care of most of it. The tank has been up for about a year and a half. Here's the population history: 2 Bolivian Rams. One died shortly after coming home (about 3 weeks). I'm pretty sure it was an aggression issue that I wasn't able to react to quickly enough. The other Ram is doing great 10 Black Phantom tetras. I'm down to 8 now. 1 male completely disappeared after a few days of laying sideways and 1 female wasted away then died. I was able to remove her body. 11 Black Neon Tetras. I have had several die suddenly, and several just disappear. I'm down to 5. Most recently, I had one that was swimming erratically and looked like he had some swim bladder issues. After a stay in the hospital tank with maracyn and expel P, he improved pretty significantly (though not 100%) and returned to the tank. He disappeared 2 days later. (This was about 3 weeks ago) 6 Panda Corys. I lost one of them within 2 weeks of coming home, and the other 5 are doing just fine for over a year 4 nerite snails bought two at a time a couple months apart from two different suppliers. I lost 2 (one rom each supplier) within 48 hours of each other, then the other two lasted about 7 months and again died within a week or two of each other. Fast forward to today. A Black Phantom is showing the same exact symptoms as the most recent black neon that died. Video below: https://youtube.com/shorts/RheMsHkTuDo?feature=share Pardon the dead plant mulm. The hospital tank was housing a bunch of plants in it. It didn't help that I was gone Monday-Friday for 5 months and only had weekends to observe and work on the tank. My wife did her best to help while I was gone. The problems seem to be local to the tetras. I tend to think the early loss of the Ram and the Cory was unrelated, but I can't be sure. Am I at a point where I have to be thinking mycobacteria? I do use really long rubber gloves in the tank now because it's been on my mind. I did a dose of expel-P for him, and he seems to have a bit more energy, but his swimming is still a mess. I could do Maracyn or Kanaplex next (not knowing if it's gram positive or negative). Thoughts?

So two rounds of maracyn with salt did the trick! He's back to normal, and I just transferred him home to his tank! Thanks so much!

in water column or in food? Do I consider kanaplex as well in case it's gram negative? Thanks so much!

A few more pictures now that he is in quarantine. In this light, you can see a dark spot all around the white thing... sorry, screenshot from a video.