cmo1922

When you say horrible, do you mean like dead fish? That is what mine smells like after I do the regeneration process for whatever reason, doesn't matter what dechlorinator I use after. I haven't had an issue when I put them back in my filter when they smell like that.

Not too much to share. In the 10 gallon, a few emerald dwarf rasbora babies here and there but nothing I can see surviving. In the 20 gal, the 3 platy and 2 corydoras kids are all still doing well and growing. Is it possible to overfeed babies? Sometimes the platy baby bellies look like they are going to explode! They are swimming at lower depths of the tank now, foraging for food. I'm also surprised how brave they are. I saw one win a fight with an ember tetra twice his size for some flake! And sometimes the gouramis will chase them from food and they just come right back for more! In the 29 gal, just some weird stuff going on with my adult platies which I've been posting about in diseases. Also someone dropped some babies this week which Chubs promptly ate. I've still got one more treatment of praziquantal next week. The treatment must have helped with something going on, as I'm not noticing any flashing now at least. But I'm still seeing some weird behaviors, with some fish hanging around the surface. Finally, a good pic of my daughter's mystery snail Anna showing her teeth! She is huge now, about the size of a ping pong ball. Thanks for reading!

Double checked parameters as well, pH 7.8 temp 76 F, ammonia/nutrients 0, nitrate looks 10-20 ppm. @Coluthoughts? Thank you!

Hello, treated with 2 courses of praziquantal so far. I haven't noticed much/any flashing for about 2 weeks. However, the original platy with the whitish lesions that prompted this post still has them. They seem to come and go and pop up in different places. This platy seems completely normal otherwise, and no other platies have developed this appearance. Here is what she looks like today. You can see she has dull scales (perhaps excessive mucous?) compared to the other platies and when she is in a certain light you can still see the greyish slightly raised lesions. There is a prominent one on her nose today. As for the other fish, the 2 males in particular spend most of the day after breakfast time at the top of the tank. Their fins are sort of clamped (not fully) and one of them has started going nose up. When I come up to the tank and tap on the glass he snaps out of it and starts swimming around like the other platies. And finally one of the females has been more inactive lately. Hangs out mostly at the bottom. She doesn't appear pregnant. I have 7 total platies in all. All fish eat like pigs even the ones I just mentioned. Nothing has died in this tank. My clown pleco and apistogramma cac are unaffected. I just don't know what is going on with these platies! I have one more praziquantal treatment to give next weekend. Any ideas of what else to try, if anything?

Hi @FLFishChik! It depends on your stocking and the ambient temp of your house but you may not need a heater. My house ranges between 68-78F depending on the season, and I keep all 3 of my tanks unheated. The seasonality brings out some different behaviors in your fish depending on time of year. For example, at 78F you may not see much spawning behavior in your peppered cories, but if you let the tank get to 68-70F you may start to get a lot of spawns! Many tetras and catfish will also do fine at these temps. I see from your journal you have kuhli loaches, I have not kept them so I cannot provide recommendations there. I know some fish are traditionally not supposed to be kept at these lower ranges, but I keep fish like honey gourami and platies in water temps as low as 68F in winter and they seem to do fine. My single cockatoo apistogramma is fine too. I do suggest keeping a heater around for emergencies or if u need to treat ich. Treating ich in a tank kept at 68F is not fun... Just a thought if you decide you don't like heaters! Personally they scare me and it is just one more thing to plug in!

Yes mine can vary from around 12 gH in summer to 16 gH in winter! I wish I had more insight otherwise on why your parameters shift over time! Like AndreaW said I would try a bag of crushed coral in the tank. Something that can release calcium and buffer slowly over time from water change to water change so things stay more consistent for your snails.

Hello! I don't know much about the Co Op heater, but do you use another thermometer (not associated with a heater) in the tank to verify temperature? I like electronic meat thermometers to double check my tank temps.

I second goofy garra and JoeQ. I know you don't want to float it. In one of my tanks I have it wrapped loosely around some driftwood that reaches towards the top of my tank, so it can do its thing and get some leaves at the surface of the water but I still can see some of it in the water. Compromise!

Hello! I'm sorry about your snails! Regarding your tap vs tank parameters, did you test parameters right out of your tap and from your tank around the same period of time? I ask because if you are using city water, depending on where you live and what time of year it is, you can have fairly different gH/kH levels depending on season and/or source. For example, some cities can utilize different water sources depending on needs, and depending on if you are in the rainy or dry season, you can have harder (dry season) or softer (wet season) water. Always good to know these things so you can periodically test and add a product like equilibrium if needed! In my experience having fairly hard water with a pH around 7.8, driftwood, leaf litter, active soils etc do very little to alter my water chemistry or pH. I use them to make biofilms for my shrimp, snails and sucker mouth catfish tho!

Congrats on making more swords! Yes you can do that, but I suggest waiting till the baby swords have bigger leaves before planting. I leave mine till leaves with the stem are about 2 inches.

Hello! I am digging your tank! I grow some bacopa caroliniana in one of my tanks and in my experience it is a slow grower, but I do not do CO2 injection. But looking at your pics, you have been much more successful than me growing this in the past☺️ so take what I say as general advice from a fellow low tech aquarium keeper (which it looka like you are). I have similar things happen to me when fast growers like floaters, hornwort, wisteria, anarchis etc get out of hand. The slower growing stems like bacopa and mermaid weed just don't do as well, either due to shading, or out competition for nutrients/CO2. Now that you have removed the likely culprit (floating plants), I would pull them up, cut off most of the bottom stem that lost the leaves, and replant the healthier tops. Make sure you plant in an unshaded area. And keep up with the ferts. Then see what happens! So your plan sounds good to me!

I live in central FL and also have fairly hard water, similar parameters to you. I have one Apistogramma cacatoides which was bred by a local FL fish farm, and it has done very well. I had more but I had to rehome them due to aggression. I would say buy them from a farm or breeder who raises them in our water and they will do fine! Message me if you would like my recommendation of the farm.

Thank you so much! I feel fortunate to be in a place in my life where I have the space and time to keep a few aquariums going!

Sadly, Kristoff the bristlenose only made it a few days... A few days after bringing him home, I found him swimming erratically and laying on his back. In hindsight, he was pretty thin, didn't eat anything, and was pretty inactive. It is unfortunate as I thought bristlenose were pretty hardy! I would love to find another small pleco for the 29 gallon... probably a second clown would be most appropriate, and for what ever reason those are really common at my PetSmart. So maybe I'll pick up one of those eventually. Just need to let the quarantine tank sit for awhile in case that pleco had something infectious going on. My clown pleco doesn't seem as shy as what I was expecting so I wouldn't mind another! Chubs the apisto is looking fancy this morning after some worms. And the baby platies are filling their little tummies and growing well! Thanks for reading ☺️

The platy with the lesions looks pretty much the same still, but acts completely normal. Thoughts? The platies def flashed more during the ich x treatment, and though it decreased after treatment was over, I still catch one flashing here and there. Doesn't seem to be one specific fish that I can tell. There are a couple of platies that continue to hang out at top of tank for a couple hours mid day with their dorsal and ventral fins held closer to their bodies. Their pectoral and caudal fins are held normally (not clamped). In the morning and towards the end of light cycle they are super active and eat like pigs. Parameters are same as before. So I'm wondering if this is just normal activity for them and I'm overanalyzing? I'm hesitant to do another course of abx just because I really don't see any other fish with lesions, everyone seems to be doing ok other than occasional flashing, and the fish with lesions hasn't gotten worse/didn't seem to have any change with the previous course of treatment. My praziquantal came in last week, and since there was still some flashing, I put a dose in after my water change. Recommended dose frequency @Colu? Thank you!

Well, lots of updates! In the 29 gallon, unfortunately I started noticing more aggression among the apistogramma. The dominant male was chasing the subordinate males, and it was getting more persistent. As my stocking is pretty much max in my other tanks, and I want to maintain my shrimp populations, I decided to re-home the 2 subordinate males to my LFS. Hopefully they do ok there and they find a good home. I feel guilty about it, but I would have felt worse if they were killed. Also in the 29, I was still seeing some occasional flashing in several platies, not as bad as when the ich x was in the tank, but still enough to get me worried. I did decide to do a praziquantal dose and will do a couple more over the next few weeks. The platy that had what I thought was epistylis still looks exactly the same but seems just fine, she is very active, eating, etc. Strange! No one else ever developed any lesions like hers. In the 20 gal, the 2 Cory juvies are loving life, and the 3 platy babies are staying safe in the hornwort. Gouramis don't seem to care about them which is great! Once they are big enough to not make a snack for the apisto, I'll put them back in the 29. 10 gallon is boring as usual...knock on wood! I feel like I'm asking for it to spring a leak! And introducing...Kristoff (named by my daughter!) the lemon blue eyed bristlenose pleco...I could not resist! I got him as a replacement for the 2 apisto males I just had to remove. He/she is in quarantine and will go in the 29 in a few weeks.

Haha yes you would think! Initially I did want to try and breed them. But now that I have had the apistos for a bit, I'm not really interested in that now. I think I will just keep my big guy alone, he seems like he will be happy enough. So he will be living out the rest of his days as the tank boss with unlimited access to platy fry and shrimp culls! Thanks everyone for the advice!

Thank you, I don't have a female in there, but I was finally able to catch him. I'm going to rehome them now, so it's less stressful for everyone, including myself! Dominant boy is looking triumphant and eating some platy fry currently 😬

Thanks Tlindsey! I managed to catch one to re-home today but the other (the smallest, least dominant male) keeps evading me. Do you think removing one sub male but keeping the other in there would work out? I will obviously keep trying to catch the other guy if that is best but was just wondering your take. The one I caught was the one the dom male tends to chase the most.

Hello, I have a 29 gal with 3 male cockatoo Apistogramma...I know, not the best choice. The intent was to have 1 male and 2 females, but was sent 3 males instead. Anyways, I was advised by breeder that it should be fine, as long as I had lots of structure and no females. And since they were mailed to me, I couldn't feasibly return them. Things were seemingly going well. However, I started working from home more a few weeks ago, so I'm getting a chance to observe their behavior more during the day. I am noticing that my dominant male is chasing the others more. It used to be a quick chase and then all was well, which I assume would be normal all things considered. But now it is more of a pursuit where he chases around the tank for a few seconds and then stops. I don't see wounds other than occasional split caudal fins which I assume is from displaying. The sub males ignore each other. Thoughts? Is it time to separate? I want to keep the dom male with the platies, as I assume he would be the most robust of them long term and he is the most efficient at eating platy babies. Then I was going to try and find a home for 1 sub male and then put the other sub male in my 20 gal, but the 20 gal has reached stocking limits IMO and I also don't want him to decimate my shrimp colony. In the 20, I also have 2 honey gourami who like to hang at bottom of tank, and a bunch of cories, so I'm sure adding the apisto to this situation would be a poor choice. So I'm thinking I would have to re-home both sub males if I remove them. Here is a pic of dom male. Based on appearance of when they arrived 3 months ago and now, I think they have all reached age of full sexual maturity (perhaps 7 or 8 months old). You can see a sub male at the edge of the pic. Thanks in advance for advice!

Thank you! I love the redundancy and planning for power outages. I have a penn plax UGF and was thinking of trying the uplift tube kit. However I already have my UGF set up. Do you think it improves the flow of the UGF? Do you need to do any significant mod to the existing UGF, or can you simply remove the existing UGF tubes and put the aquarium co op uplift tubes in their place? Can the uplift tubes attach directly to that short tube that sticks out of the substrate when you remove the longer tube to service your air stones, etc? Thanks!

@tolstoy21I love your shrimp pics. I would love to keep them but am too scared to try the cardina in my tap!!! I fear I would kill them all🥺

I love it! Is that an undergravel filter you got there?!

Platies have stopped flashing like they were last week. I'm assuming the flashing was mostly due to the ich x. We will see how everyone does over the next few weeks after treatment. The fish with what I thought was epistylis still looks pretty much the same, but is completely fine otherwise. I'm wondering if it's a benign virus? Who knows! Anyways, apistos are vicious hunters. I've noticed mine hang out towards the top of my tank more than you would expect, and I wondered why...while working from home today I observed a feeding frenzy as they took down most of the platy fry right as they popped out of mom. Poor little guys. I guess that explains why I don't see many fry in there! I managed to save 3 newborns and put them in my 20 gal for safe keeping. Will take pics of baby platies soon. I'm glad I saved some because they are the cutest, derpiest fry I've seen! 💓

Hello! My ferns will grow well initially when I start up my tanks, but then they start to develop brown spots like yours. I attribute this to other faster/more aggressive growers outcompeting them for nutrients. But yours certainly look much more lush than mine! Everyone says java fern issues are due to lack of potassium. But I have tried to supplement extra K, to no avail! But it won't hurt to try and supplement more potassium and see if that helps! From what I've read, the brown spots can be seen when the fern doesn't get enough CO2, either from general lack of it in the tank (no injection or other plants outcompeting) or poor CO2 distribution if you are injecting. I am no expert at CO2 use, but that is what my conclusion is in my tanks. They are supposed to be low tech, but mine always struggle in my low tech tanks despite everything else looking pretty good!