aminowrimo

Yesterday I did some leaf trimming. The crypt red wendtii is melting heavily. It could be the amazon sword growing over it, so I removed some of those leaves. I also removed a bunch from the lefthand sword too since it was covering up the mayaca fluviatilis. The water is so dark it's hard to see anything. I did test KH and GH again today and I'm up to 2° for both of them. (Yay!) What's more interesting to me is how many snails look much better than they did; clearly healthier shells on the outside ring. Everybody got bloodworms this morning because i'm going on vacation so they'll only have pellets for a few weeks with the autofeeder.

You can generally evaluate a betta in-store for aggression. I have an alien betta in the tank with a school of neon/cardinal tetras (combined school). He didn't flare nearly as hard at us in the store as any other betta, and that's why I chose him; the outcross to wild-type betta also reduces aggression.

I was just pondering this question while watching Cory today, wondering, what does his wife think of the aquarium hobby? My husband was onboard with us getting fish and has helped a lot in doing medication water changes. He helped set up the tank and strongly suggested neon tetras. He also enjoys looking at the tank now that I've spiffied it up. But he does not really nerd out about the plants or the ecosystem or the variety of frozen foods I purchased (because we have nano fish, I can't feed a whole cube and thus cut it up then store it in a jar in the freezer). However, when I've had tough times he's happy to do basic maintenance on the tank (basic sand vaccing and water changes). What are your loved ones' (or roommates) perspectives on your tanks?

I think even if it's discontinued somebody on the customer service team should be able to send you the manual.

I ended up buying the mayaca fluviatilis that caught my eye last time and I planted it in the front. Was super fun watching the tetras go through. Fonsi seems to be kind of ignoring the strands. I also got the fish some bloodworms and fed them that, which they loooved. I'm waiting on hornwort and amazon frogbit to arrive tomorrow; very hopeful it will actually make it. Fonsi has learned that the pipette means food and will chase it around the tank. I need to find some plastic mesh for when we go on vacation so he doesn't think he wants to jump at the autofeeder and out of the tank. He just starts looking better and better the longer he's in the tank. I love him. Attached is also a picture of the snail that I find very interesting; it seems like it got much better nutrition all of a sudden and the new shell is nice and dark whereas the older shell is pitted and pockmarked.

I'm adding only 1-2 pieces of aragonite before testing again. So far the first two pieces don't seem to have had an effect, so I added another two pieces today and will test KH and GH again tomorrow. The cardinal tetra I netted out last week for potential euthanasia must have been quite stressed: he started developing small snout chondromas. Very slowly, but it's interesting to see proof that this really is stress-based. I'll keep an eye and may euthanize before we leave. A neon tetra was found deceased on Monday for no reason I can ascertain but unfortunately had been mostly eaten. Thankfully, that one was from the new batch so possibly did not have NTD. @ColuThe IAL helped Fonsi a bunch. Earlier this week I noticed the bump on his lower lip sieemed to be reducing. Now he looks good as new; except of course he keeps finding new ways to tear his caudal fin. Will keep an eye and possibly replace the stump.

He's looking great! You're doing wonderfully with him.

Yesterday was my dissertation defense and while looking at Fonsi afterward I had a feeling his little bump was getting smaller. Today it looks like it has almost disappeared! Very happy. We had a neon tetra die; not sure for what reason, as all the neons looked very healthy. This morning I tried to test ammonia but I am out of bottle #2 unexpectedly. Because of family being in town I am actually going to run to the LFS tomorrow to update my kit. Plants I ordered in from aquaswap but that were lost in the mail came in on Monday; the amazon frogbit is deceased, but some of the hornwort looks like it is hanging in there? I plopped it in the tank and am watching it to see how it does. Very excited to go to the LFS tomorrow; I forgot on Sunday when I was there to explore one whole corner of the store because I was so focused on the aragonite!

Your betta may not kill the cories; it's betta dependent whether they are aggressive. A dumbo betta male may not be fast enough to catch pygmy cories. However, you can better ensure that the betta won't see the cories as intruders into his territory (and therefore be more likely to kill them) by moving decor around so that the betta is more likely to see the cories as part of the territory rather than intruders.

I added the aquarium co-op sponge filter on top of the current sponge filter to seed it. Unfortunately at this height the easy flow kit does not work. However, I know I will want the kit at its regular height when the sponge is done being seeded; I am going to switch away from the fine sponge I was using but I will also want the small sponge to be seeded for any quarantining of fish that must be done. So I also added an additional air stone. The bubbles are so much smaller and quieter! Definitely better for the amazon frogbit I plan to add later this week if USPS does its job correctly.

New goal! I will have to do a lot of research! Unfortunately it'll be a good few years before I can likely have a second tank. Are any of these species able to be kept in a community tank, or do they all do better being solo species in a tank? Any good resources to learn? (I'm sure there's a bunch earlier in the thread; I'll have to go back and read carefully). Fascinating video. Wow.

Wow. I stumbled across this thread and some day I will be able to get multiple tanks and I will have a NANF tank. This is absolutely phenomenal. I am so excited by the darters!

Ok good to know; my GH is also super low but I'm not sure how much the tea color of my tank right now is contributing to that. I'll test again tomorrow. We used to have a stone in there in the first few weeks of the tank but it was really pushing pH up and we didn't know any better so got rid of it. Yeah I pretty much love the south american fish and gourami and such so it's actually perfect. 🙂 Thanks so much for your help!

I did call around my LFSs today and found one I hadn't been to before that sells aragonite. Picked that up and added two bits to the media bag that's holding the catappa leaves; I'll test again tomorrow and if it doesn't go up within a day or two add more; they said adding the whole bag would probably shoot my pH to 7.8 and I don't want that. What do you think is a reasonable buffer? At least 3, or better to have more like 5? And thanks for the 1 drop = 1 degree; that's what I thought but the instructions were not explicit.

Been posting enough that I think it'll be good to have a place to eep track of all the things going on in this tank as of today; I might make another topic at some point for the tank prior to this, since it may be interesting and/or useful to people. The current stocking of the tank is 11 neon tetras, 7 cardinal tetras, and one alien betta named Fonsi. There is also one carbon rili shrimp (i believe) that hopped along for the ride with the neons whom I've named Tagalong, and a bunch of ramshorn snails. Added 20 catappa leaves to this tank about two days ago and it is already tea-colored. The pH dropped down to 6.6 (typical for this tank when adding catappa) and after looking into things over the past few days I decided better safe than sorry. It would also be nice to have a bit of control and peace of mind when we leave for trips. So went down to a new local fish store and got some aragonite (which is what the LFS had on hand), had one guy tell me it wouldn't work and another tell me it would do exactly what I wanted. I'll add it later today right after the water change, because I want to test GH and KH again for data. I know that some folks really love blackwater and I again think I'm not the biggest fan. It is harder to see the vibrant greens I love in this tank like this, but... hopefully this will help Fonsi the betta with a cyst or chondroma that may be a symptom of neon tetra disease. Because of the NTD I'm sure is in the tank, I won't be adding any new fish to this tank, but I will do my best with plants and inverts. Once all the fish die, I'll fish out the inverts as best I can. Hopefully by that point we will be in a place where we can have multiple tanks. I'll then be able to use hydrogen peroxide to sterilize this tank and leave it free of fish for 3 months. At that point I'll be able to add in new fish. The new LFS is absolutely fantastic for plants, so I may go in and hunt for some nice plants to add to my tank in August. Here's the tank one day apart; right when the leaves were added (I ended up putting them in a media bag because I don't want debris everywhere) and a day after. I'll add the aragonite to my media bag after the water change.

I'd seen aquariums in other peoples' homes and never really gotten into them (they weren't planted). Then I had a friend that got an aquarium and was sending me pictures. I really wanted a pet and then ended up falling down the rabbit hole...

Thanks for reading and responding! I went through and read what you had, and I don't think that's what I have. I'm really glad for your fish that it worked! I do think Colu is right and this is NTD. In case anyone later has a similar issue and is trying to get information, here are the differences between the two cases as far as I can tell: my fish's chondromas grew very slowly. No one lost tails. Even on the betta, his scales look great and his tail looks great. The cyst/chondroma has gone from maybe half a millimeter to maybe a millimeter in 2 weeks. We never had a cyst "pop." salt did not help, though it seemed to slow down the development of the chondromas (possibly wishful thinking). We did not have any white residue at the bottom of the tank after treatment with kanaplex and salt. We saw no improvement, just a slowing of the issues (if that), with any of the treatments we tried (salt, Maracyn, Maracyn 2, Kanaplex, ich-X, paracleanse) Lymphocystis was mentioned, but the article you linked https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FA181 indicates it's a self-limiting disease and often clears up within six weeks; our neons never recovered, and in fact many of them had (slow to extremely slow growing) cysts until they died. It doesn't look like lymphocystis is treatable. We did not see any slime on the body, though we did see some mild discoloration on sides. This could be because we have tetras and a betta and you were dealing with other species. None of our fish died until 6 months to a year later, despite continuing to have the cysts. The last one, which I euthanized yesterday, lived 2 years after we stopped treatment. This person's experience matches mine, down to the other neons and cardinals introduced not having issues: What is similar: cysts starting to appear within 7-8 days of arrival in your case. For us, it took about 2 weeks before we noticed and could get a picture. I just tested KH and pH again and I'm a little unsure of how to read the test for KH. My water is very slightly tinged brown to begin with because of the catappa. The instructions want me to count the number of drops until the tube turns yellow. The first drop gives me a green, the second a yellow-green. At five it is for sure bright yellow, everything else I'd characterize yellow-ish. I can try to take pictures tomorrow of the set of tests. This indicates 0-50 ppm (if 1-3 drops), or 50-100ppm (4-6). My water out of the tap is KH 0-50 again. (1 drop was enough to be light yellow) I'm keeping neons, cardinals, and a betta. The neons and cardinals are fine down to pH 4, from some googling it seems the betta would be ok 6.5-7.5 and some people say even 5.5. Since I for sure don't want the pH to drop further than that and hurt him, I went back to look through my records and since I set up the tank two years ago, the lowest the pH has ever gotten is 6.6 (even from first set-up when cycling). In fact, most of the time when I don't have catappa the tank is 7.0 - 7.2. When I do have catappa, I get down to 6.6. On 5/18 I added two catappa leaves and the tank started dropping down to 6.6. I don't know if the worry is that the tank would experience potential swings even lower than that, but I think I could combat that by adding an airstone in addition to the sponge filter? If given all that information you and other folks feel it would be smart to buy some crushed coral, I'll do that, but for right now this isn't worrying me.

This is so exciting! Eager to see it set up! I think the stocking is going to be awesome.

I euthanised one of my fish and then added an entire pack of catappa leaves to the tank! Very excited to see how it develops and whether it helps my betta.

Oh I bet... the current LFS owner was pretty condescending when we mentioned it recently... "You should have salted the tank. Salt fixes almost everything." I had just finished telling him all the things we tried after salt didn't work. Oh if my quarantine tank and its filter sat empty and dry for a year, do I still need to sterilize it with hydrogen peroxide? It just had the new fish in it but nothing else. I did just add the airstone from the euth back in there though so I suspect the answer is yes. 😭

Yeah and that's what we did... I just wish we'd known to euthanize the original six; they had QOL but the chondromas did continue evolving and some did have fins disappear (as OG guy pic showed). Doing that the first time around would have meant we would have had to start over with the tank, but we wouldn't have potentially infected 20+ new fish. 😭

Sorry! Neon Tetra Disease! And I'll for sure send pictures of the blackwater. I'll have to stock up on catappa leaves. XD

Good to know; the only symptoms we've ever seen is snout chondroma and at one point we definitely had a fish swimming down rapidly and not being able to swim straight at all (always tilted around in circles). But none have ever shown the "classic" signs of NTD so we just couldn't figure out what it was two years ago. But I know for a fact a fish died and was probably consumed in this tank, so for sure the cardinal tetras were exposed. Fonsi must have just nipped the neon with chondromas and gotten the chondroma that way. But I'll keep y'all updated on him and keep taking pictures. I'm really hoping he can beat it, at least on the outside.

I am very glad I had just ordered a batch of catappa leaves because that whole thing just went into the tank. We're going to have a darkwater scape now!

Ok! So I will add a bunch of catappa to the tank and monitor the betta. I'll make a decision about the neons and taking apart the tank over the course of the next week. Thanks so much for your help and for saving me a lot of time dosing medication!