ZoeyFish

I set up my 75-gallon planted tank in December 2019. Since that time I had about 40 Neon Tetras at once. Some were bought from my LFS and the rest were from an online order sometime later. I've had Neon Tetra Disease (NTD) in the tank for years but it only clicked that it really was NTD probably six months ago. As you'll read in many articles, and from the coop, most people don't actually have NTD and they have something else. So I wanted to share my observations of having that disease in my tank for the past few years. The tank Neon Tetras Panda Corys Red Cherry Shrimp Snails Heavily Planted How I know I have NTD Well, it's sort of embarrassing that it took me years to realize that I actually had NTD but here is how I arrived at this point. My fish would occasionally die off and I didn't think much about it. I've had the tank for years and some are going to die over that time. I bought a decent amount of "jumbo" tetra's so I figured they were older and all that. However, fish were developing growths on their body. From what I've seen in my fish there is usually either growth around the mouth that get extremely large or there is growth from inside of the fish. The growth might be near the middle of the fish or towards the end of the tail. When I started noticing the growth I did provide medication. Over the years I've used Mardel Maracyn, Fritz paracleanse, and even some API products. Obviously, this stuff never helped as I misdiagnosed NTD but I did attempt to treat the fish the best way I knew how. Another thing to mention about the growth, which is a key identifier that I overlooked initially, is the growth looks hard. It's not some soft fungus growing on the fish, these are hard lumps on the fish. Their shape doesn't change (except get bigger), they don't look squishy, they are solid. Aside from the growths that I witnessed the fish would start to lose its color 1-3 days before death. They would go noticeably pale to where you knew that fish was in trouble. At this point some fish may not be able to swim like normal. Didn't it wipe out all of your fish! No, not really. There was never a mass die-off or a big event where I lost a ton of fish. Out of the 40 fish I still had around 16 as of a few months ago (more on that soon). I still have Neon Tetra's in the tank and some of them are the same jumbo ones that were the first ones I bought three years ago and they look fine. I have no doubt that all the Neon Tetra's have the disease at this point. So I can say with confidence, at least with my setup, NTD doesn't immediately wipe out all fish. When I realized it was NTD, I euthanized early Of course I don't want fish to suffer, and over the years I've euthanized some unhealthy fish with Clove Oil (I highly recommend it, my fish never visibly struggle and just eventually fall asleep. If your fish thrashed doing this you did it wrong.) However, about five months ago when I realized it was NTD and I knew the outcome for the fish I decided to finally be proactive about it. There were a few fish that had growths on their body and I decided to catch them and euthanize them. They would have lived for many more weeks as the growths were small and just starting to develop but I knew the outcome. Over these five months I've euthanized about 8 or 9 in two separate batches. I still have about 8 tetras left without showing visible signs of NTD. How did NTD spread? I learned that NTD spreads from fish eating parts of dead infected fish floating in the water column. You see, my tank has 150-200 Red Cherry shrimp, snails, and is a very active tank. When a fish died, it would be eaten within a day. I saw no harm in leaving the fish in there as it was food for other animals and quickly was dealt with so, in my eyes, the chance for any negative impact to the tank was minor. A dead tetra wasn't going to throw off my balanced tank. So, I assume that as bits of fish were floating other fish ate it and got the disease. As I've stated, I didn't know it was NTD for years. Has NTD affected other fish in the tank? I have Panda Corys and I haven't lost a single one, ever. In fact they had babies who have grown up and are little adults of their own. I also have a few Endlers and they are so small I really wouldn't be able to tell if they ever had growths or not, I never noticed any growths on them. What now? I'm just letting the Neon Tetras live out their lives. I periodically check the tank to make sure there aren't any visible or concerning signs of NTD, and as long as there aren't I'm just letting them be. When I see signs of NTD, I'll euthanize the fish. That's it! Maybe this will be insightful for someone, or maybe not. Either way, I wanted to post my experience so if anything someone can learn more about NTD. Thanks!

One of the lilies on the surface is 5" long and 4" wide. There are definitely bigger ones in the tank but those are submerged! @Patrick_G those look very good! I like how you have two different colors.

Hello! You may have seen the Tiger Lotus bulb in the Aquarium Coop store and wondered what that could look like in your tank. I wanted to take a minute to show some images of how my plant has done so you can see if this is something you'd like in your tank. This post is solely for the purpose of showing what the plant can look like and is not going to get into how to properly grow it, ideal tank for it, nutrients, etc. as I'm sure you can find that elsewhere and I'm in no way an expert. Here is the link to purchase the item: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/tiger-lotus-bulb-only?variant=29485958627397 I bought my bulb back in January 2020 but the growth you will see isn't from that entire time. My tank was new, I battled some BBA (and you will see some still lingering in the photos, I'm renewing my effort to eradicate it!). The lily always grew but it would stay small as the old growth always died and the new growth would replace it. Now it's grown like crazy. Photo 1 This photo shows the tiger lotus when it was small and just starting to grow. It's very compact and adds some nice color and texture to the aquarium. Photo 2 This photo is part of the tiger lotus today but this portion of it is a good example of what I'd consider the middle stages of the plant. Although it starts compact it grew to about half the height of my tank and created a nice dome look. Again, this specific photo doesn't do the middle stage justice but this just shows the height. Photo 3 Once your tiger lotus really starts to get going it decides it wants to go to the surface of your tank. The new lilies it creates go straight for the surface and keep their lily small and curled as they go up your water column until they reach the surface and then they start growing. As you can see in this picture, it seems like almost all new lilies go for the surface. Photo 4 Here is another photo showing the lilies up at the surface of my tank. Photo 5 This is a close up look of Photo 2 showing that, once established, the lotus starts to spread and continuously sends out new lilies. Photo 6 This picture shows the top of the tank. Closing Thoughts I hope you enjoyed seeing how this plant grows and what it could look like in your aquarium. It's been lots of fun watching this plant grow. I just let my plant grow however it wanted to and never cut back or trimmed it until this month. These photos show the raw version of the plant but keep in mind that once it gets to this stage those lilies will block out light for the bottom of the tank. For some people that may be perfect but for me I needed to thin them out a bit but I still think it's very cool that and will continue to have lilies at the top.

What you see coming out of the bulb is the lilies, not the roots. These should be facing up towards the top of your tank. As for placement of the bulb that's up to you. Personally, I pretty much buried mine just beneath the substrate so that only the tip was just barely visible. Here's a recent photo of my Tiger Lily from when I was doing some tank maintenance. Mine took some time to establish but once it got going it's went crazy. Good luck!

Hey there! As Cory and others have said, there is an imbalance in your tank. I'm not an expert in this area and have only been in the hobby for about three years but I wanted to give my thoughts so take them for what they are worth. From what I see in your pictures I think there may be too much fertilizer used for the amount of plants in the aquarium. The extra fertilizer is being utilized by the algae. I also see you're plants are in the substrate and are already getting the majority of their nutrients from the root tabs you've been using (I'm assuming here). The liquid fertilizer mainly adds nutrients to the water column for plants that heavily feed from there. Someone more experienced in plants would probably be able to give a rough % of how much a plant absorbs nutrients from root system in substrate vs water column but I'd guess the majority comes from substrate. As others have also mentioned there are fish that will eat all this up for you and help keep things clean. If you don't plan on getting a cleaning fish to help battle this then I'd suggest staying on top of cutting off the dying parts of the plants that are losing the battle to algae to help slow down the spread. I battled Black Beard Algae and tried letting the tank balance itself out without removing it and was left with a mess. Once I started aggressively removing the algae and balancing I got it under control quickly. Keep trying until you dial everything in. Even if it takes months to figure out it's worth it!

I'm not an expert on this but I will tell you my personal experience. TLDR: Cardinal Tetra's and Mystery Snails seem compatible to me. I have a 75 gallon with Neon Tetras and added Mystery Snails back in January 2021. I also have other inhabitants like a Nerite Snail, Red Cherry Shrimp, and Panda Corys. According to a test strip I just used my PH is 6.5 and I have very hard water (Hardness 300). The Mystery Snails I bought online came to me with very bad broken shells. Really, a very large amount of the end of the shell was missing. In my aquarium all of the shells have healed and grown very nice over time and the Mystery Snails were mating like crazy as I continuously found egg sacks at the top of my aquarium. I realize people will say to prevent Mystery Snails form mating don't leave a 1 inch gap between the top of the water and the top of the aquarium but my snails didn't care. Early on I did add Wonder Shell to the tank and dropped in some ZooMed Banquets to help the snails recover and I'd suggest you do the same. Mystery snails are a wonderful addition to a cleanup crew and are always one the move so I do recommend them. You didn't specify how big your tank is though so I will add that you don't need very many in a tank. It all depends on your size and how much plant debris you need cleaned up. Good luck!

Just confirming that 10 should be plenty. I wouldn't get fewer than 10 and if you can afford it I'd probably go with 20 to account for any die off you may experience in your tank. If you're on a tight budget then 10 will be fine assuming the aquarium they'll be living in is seasoned and ready to go. Personally I started with 15 RCS and it was great to watch the colony increase over time. I have around 150-200 in my 75gallon tank right now and as the tank changes that number may decreased or increase over time. Good luck!

As @Toniksaid I'd also be interested to hear about the update from @KentFishFanUK. The one thing I can add to this thread is that I have a few neon tetras that look just like that but by all accounts seem perfectly fine. I have around 40 Neon Tetras in my 75 gallon tank who have been there for over two years and they've all went through meds twice. Like I mentioned before, a few have giant bellies but behave just like the others with no issues that I can tell. With that said, if you have never ran your fish through any medications then you may want to as a precaution. Lastly, am I an expert in fish disease? Nope. Maybe my few tetras have something bad and I haven't caught it but it hasn't spread in two years and they still swim, eat, and hang out in the tank like everyone else. Good luck!

@Torrey Whoa, thanks for all that info! That's a lot of help. One thing I have tried is adjusting the ISO but I didn't realize it's not standardized anymore so that will help me adjust what I'm trying to what I read online. I also have a photo that's like you described, the fishes face is in focus but the tail isn't because the fish wasn't lined up properly. Good to understand exactly why! @Streetwise Thanks for the information, will look into that. I did find the grid of thirds setting so will also use that along with the leveling icon.

Thanks for the reply Zenzo! I don't doubt that at all. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. The Amazon lenses I just bought was three for $20 and I'm hoping to find another deal for some more but I did take a look at the Moment lenses you linked so thanks for that. I completely agree that they are getting better. The main issue I have with my android phone is that the digital zoom makes the picture look horrible. So right now I'm unable to use my camera phone for anything other than a non-zoomed in photo. This works for snails and sometimes shrimp but I personally haven't had much luck with fish coming up close and hanging out. I've also tried using photo apps like Adobe's Lightroom and Open Camera so that I can adjust some settings to hopefully get shots of fish moving but haven't had any luck. Mostly I just have blurred shots. But this is a journey and I'll keep working on things. I'm wondering on how much of a difference a x2 or x4 lens would make when trying to shoot the middle/back of tank.

My first go at photographing my aquarium. I bought a macro phone camera lens this weekend and trying to figure it out but wanted to share what I have so far.

Hello, I'm working on my aquarium photography and I'm looking for recommendations for a camera phone lens that can shoot the middle and back of tank for an Android phone. I have a 75gallon tank and the depth of the tank is 18" from the front glass to the back. I recently bought a Macro Lens from Amazon that has a shooting distance of 1.18-3.54 inches which works great for photos near the glass but obviously does me no good past that 4" mark. If anyone has any recommendations (please provide link) I'd appreciate it.

I just checked on him and he seems to be right-side-up now, but he looks a bit rough. I did a digital zoom on my phone so not the best quality but you should be able to see him. Maybe he'll start moving around fine, he could have just been full on worms 🙂 Still looking for any thoughts and will update as I observe the snail.

Almost anytime I see a snail (Nerite or Mystery) not moving they are hunkered down in their shell. The only time I've seen them not in their shell and sticking out a bit while "resting" is when they were dying as I've lost one Mystery Snail previously. So below I want to describe my experience last night to understand if this is normal or possibly an issue with the food I gave last night. I recently bought Hikari Tubifex Worms from the Coop and placed a cube of the dried worms in the tank last night hoping it would be a good snack for the Panda Cory's. Before heading to bed I saw one of my blue mystery snails on the cube with some shrimp. This morning the snail was a few inches from where the cube was last night but instead of being enclosed in his shell, like snails usually do when they aren't mobile, he was on his side with his body sticking out (picture attached). He was like this for a few hours so I gave him a nudge with some aquarium tweezers and he retreated a bit but not fully into his shell. Is there anything I should know about Tubifex Worms and Mystery Snails or is this normal behavior? You will notice in the image his shell is cracked, the snail came like that from the online seller. In total I have three Mystery Snails who have been in the tank for over a month with no issues and I have one Nerite snail who has been in the tank over a year. The only new item introduced into the tank is the cube of worms. Where are my tank details? This question is strictly about Mystery Snails and Tubifex Worms and if it's not related to Tubifex Worms then I will do additional research on that outside of this thread. Thanks for any insight!

I think that tower looks great. It will be interesting to see which plants you have on the mountain (assuming you're going to plant it). Keep the updates coming!

I was watching a Youtube video Cory did where he discussed the sponge filters and how to make adjustments like Maggie mentioned but this issue didn't come up. As mentioned, the Ziss airstone can be turned to adjust bubbles and your air pump may have an adjustment to increase/decrease air flow. Maybe @Cory could offer any additional thoughts. Here is the sponge filter video I was talking about

I've attached Java Fern, Trident Fern, and Anubias to wood using the gel super glue. I'd suggest getting a toothpick, or something similar, to hold the plant onto the glue or else you'll get it on your hands. It usually only takes 10 seconds until the glue will hold the plant (depends on the size of course) and then I just let it sit for a minute or two. Be sure to pat the wood and the plant dry prior to adding the gel. It's fine to put it in the aquarium after only a few minutes and should hold the plant unless you have a very strong flow.

I agree that bringing in samples for them to view, or e-mailing with photos of your tank and the fish you want to sell, would be the best way. If you just call and say I have X and want to sell for Y they have nothing to go off of. They probably don't want to commit without seeing the quality. Maybe you can call and ask if there is a slow time of the day that you'd like to stop by to show off some fish you'd be interested in selling and would be happy to discuss details then. Also, I personally wouldn't get too hung up on price if you're running out of room and need to get rid of them. If they say no and you're stuck with fish you can't keep that's a bad situation. However, if you don't have to sell them then that's a different story and you can try to get the price you want and walk away if you don't. Just make that decision before you go meet with them. Good luck!

Thanks for all the replies. I should have been more specific about the type of tetras I have. I currently have Neon Tetra's and plan to add more Neon Tetras. I have thought about adding some different types of tetras to the tank so it is good to get the feedback about other tetras and shrimp. As a few people have mentioned, I think I'll set up the quarantine tank for observation to make sure the fish are healthy before putting them into the 75 gallon but at this point in time I feel my shrimp will be safe. Thanks again!

I have a 75 gallon planted tank with 20 tetras and ~90 red cherry shrimp (RCS). Everyone in the tank gets along well and I started with 10 RCS and they keep having babies, which is great. The tetras aren't aggressive and only occasionally will nip at the shrimp if they are swimming during feeding time, but only briefly and they don't chase the shrimp once they realize they aren't food. I want to add 20 or 30 more tetras to the tank but I haven't added anything new to the tank in over a year. Should I have any concerns that the new tetras may behave differently and could be aggressive towards the shrimp? Or can I assume that since there is already a school of tetra in the tank that the new tetras wouldn't adversely affect the behavior of existing tetras and, more likely, will follow their lead and leave the shrimp alone? I've also considered getting the new tetras and setting up a quarantine tank and then every few days take 3-5 from the quarantine tank and place them into the main tank. The idea behind this is the smaller number of new tetras would join the current school of tetras and fall in line instead of adding such a large number all at once and possibly having some chaos. I may be over thinking this as I selected tetras for my RCS tank because they are not usually aggressive. Any advice is appreciated.

I had 20 cherry barbs spawn and called up my local fish store. They told me what size they needed to be before they'd take them and that they'd give me store credit. I took them in and the guy was so happy with them he was going to put them in his own tank. I talked to them about me bringing in cherry shrimp and they said they'd be happy to and would also give store credit. I know most people want cash but my LFS, like many others, also sell high end filters, aquariums, gravel, plants, and all the supplies you could want. So I view store credit as a way I could continue to upgrade my setup for free, or get new tanks for free, or even sell the filters online if I need to since I don't feel comfortable shipping my fish or shrimp. Good luck!

The quickest way to cycle a new tank is to use a filter and filter media that has been in a seasoned tank for quite some time. Since you are talking about moving this sponge filter into a brand new tank I would not wring it out prior to putting it into the new tank as, like you're stated, it would lose some of the beneficial bacteria (BB). I have heard of people who would wring out the sponge inside the new aquarium, therefore dispersing the BB in the tank you're trying to cycle which would also work. I can't personally speak to that method but in general you should make sure all that good BB from your current sponge makes it into the new tank. Also, I'm sure your heater has some good bacteria on it but I do not think it is necessary to move into the tank for cycling. Good luck with the new tank and your current tank looks great!

I'd agree, looks like a bladder snail. Common snail found on plants that you order. You will get an answer from different people on whether you should keep it or not. It basically comes down to aesthetics. These guys will breed a lot (depending on available food) and once established you probably won't be able to get rid of them. They are beneficial to the aquarium and to the plants so it just comes down to whether you want to look at them or not. I think they're awesome but I did pluck them from my main 75gallon and put them into a 10 gallon because I didn't want them all over the place in that specific tank. If you want snails that do not breed (in a standard freshwater tank) then a Nerite snail may be more what you're looking for if you'd like to keep snails.

@rdaled Thanks for the post, I learned more about frequency of water changes. I do have a question about your tank, how do you anchor your java moss? I've used both aquarium safe rope and also super glue (from one of Cory's videos) but wanted to know what you use. I'm also sure that with just an air stone you don't have a strong flow moving the moss around so it may just naturally float and branch out like that. Any tips are appreciated!

I wouldn't worry about it. I have this same sponge in a tank with about 100 shrimp and they go in and out of it all the time. I can't really say if any of them have died in there, may have happened over the year I've had this filter, but I've never seen it happen. You shouldn't worry about it and not much you can do with such a course sponge. If this really does bother you then my only suggestion is get a different filter with finer material so nothing can go in and out of it, you'd just have to clean it more often which is why Cory sells the course option. Good luck!