Odd Duck

I guess I’ve been lucky so far (knocking on wood so I don’t jinx myself) but I’ve got 2 x 6 G and 1 x 14 G Aqueon cubes and not had any leaks so far. Bought the first 6 G second hand and the next 2 new in box from somebody that changed his mind and decided to go for a single, bigger, fancier cube. They are all on very sturdy, very flat, level cabinets so I suspect that helps. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Sorry for your stress level - I had a geriatric, regular 10 G spring a catastrophic bottom seam leak so I feel your pain. Went from functioning to water pouring onto the floor in a matter of minutes! Luckily it was in my rack and the cories that were literally laying on their sides by the time I could walk back there went right into the other quarantine tank next to it and went about the rest of their life like nothing had happened! Still have them. 😃 Don’t have the tank. That geriatric, cheap 10 G wasn’t worth even giving it away to somebody.

Came here to say all these things and everyone beat me to it. Your tank / filter will cycle to your bioload. If the bacteria was only in substrate and on hardscape then bare bottom tanks with no hardscape are in deep trouble. But they aren’t actually if they have a good level of biofiltration. I have 3 bare bottom, no hardscape, 5 gallon guppy tanks that are loaded with guppies. Well, 2 are loaded, one isn’t quite yet. I moved at least 25-30 out of one today (because let’s face it, I’m playing with fire at this point, they are only 5G) and it was not quite half the total population. I really need to take some to my LFS! But I have medium ACO sponges in them because they were intended as “dirty” snail, scud, blackworm tanks for pea puffers. Then they got some mosquito larvae, so I popped a male guppy in each. Then other guppy tanks got crowded so more guppies went in, and now I need to thin the herd. Or is it horde? My point is, that the tank population grew gradually, so food gradually increased, and beneficial bacteria population grew along with the guppy population. You had so much overfiltration that your bacteria weren’t stimulated enough to grow a decent population in your giant filter.

Cats almost never eat enough to get significantly ill. They don’t taste good but they can cause mild GI upset and potentially oral irritation from the oxalates. I’ve never once had to treat a cat for eating pothos in almost 30 years. I’ve even had to treat a couple cats for eating chocolate which is very rare. None for the “potential kidney issues” you’ll read about from eating pothos. My cats mess with them sometimes, they’ve tasted them, but they don’t eat them. I’ll never say there’s never been a cat treated for ingesting pothos, somebody’s always going to break the rules. 😆 Because, well, . . . cats. But I’ve never seen anything other than 1-2 vomits and done. We get the phone calls, but most owners don’t elect to bring them in because the symptoms don’t last.

My best growing pothos get sunlight. It takes me about 30-45 minutes about every 3 months to hack back this jungle. The vines do exactly what I wanted them to do and more. The goal was for them to hang over the back of the tank to shade it to prevent overheating the tank and reduce algae along with pulling nitrates out of the water. They do all that plus climb the window, climb the wall, crawl across the floor, etc, etc. I worry they might start asking for Seymour, soon.

Rummynose would be very, very unlikely, but adult dwarf rainbows might? The blue-eyed group of rainbows would not. They are a little over 1/2” long when they come out of the cave but have a fairly substantial head / body compared to most 1/2” long fry. Plus come equipped with spiky catfish fins so I think they are significantly less appetizing than most fry.

I typically pull the fry aiming for just before they are going to come out of the cave. Sometimes I miss it and see a fry pop out. Then I pull the cave immediately and transfer the fry if that happens. If I have no fish in a tank that will eat the fry then I have to decide how difficult it will be to catch the fry from that tank later. If you’ll have to tear the tank apart to get the fry then pulling them before they come out of the cave is far easier.

@Biotope Biologist has a similar effect in one of his tanks. It’s this one in his sig. I’m hoping to manage something a little like this if I can find the right rocks for the 180 G that’s still out on my patio right now. 😆 I’ll have to find just the right rocks and put them on lighting grid to distribute weight.

There has been quite a lot posted in the forum about feeding pea puffers. Here’s a link to a fairly extensive recent discussion. There are a couple links in my signature that might interest you. Both have evolved away from pea puffers but the first page or so of each topic will be informative. Check out the “6 G Buce” link and the “29 G pea puffer” link along with the link attached below to an identical topic. Sorry, @KittenFishMom if it brings up bad memories.

You should try water soluble pastels. You can lay down precise color, then blend with as much or little water as you like. No, I’m not posting anything of mine. I used to do a lot of artwork but haven’t for literally decades and I’m ridiculously out of practice plus I haven’t really produced anything in years. But water soluble pastels are very cool.

Yes, I’ve used water spikes for caves. I haven’t had the temperature that low since we keep the house slightly warmer than that.

@Guppysnail, you mentioned on another topic that I can’t seem to find, that you microwave your dog food to eliminate mites. How long do you microwave what volume of food. I tried this the other day and I may have overdone it. Now I can’t get the smell out of the microwave despite multiple cleanings. 😆 Oops! 🤣

Aliens are definitely hybrids, so by every definition I know, they can’t be F0. But more casually, some people refer to the first fish they receive as an F0 since they usually have no way of knowing what generation it is. Not “scientifically” correct, but easier to try to track once in their hands. @Lennie Your example of wild caught altum angels is accurate. You can compare dogs with fish, but when do we start deciding a breed is pure? Dobermans as a breed are a fairly young breed that came from crossing many other breeds while trying for specific traits. Same with boxers. I have no idea how many generations have gone into aliens so even though they are a relatively young breed, II would say we’re well past the point of even using F0, F1, etc, notation for the fish that gets into the hobbyist’s hands.

I’ve been keeping fish for a very, very long time. I’m pretty sure I’ve made just about every mistake you can possibly make. Forgot to unplug heaters, forgot to plug heaters back in. Forgot to unplug filters, forgot to plug them back in. Waited too long to clean prefilters to the point where it killed HOB’s. Left sponge filters go so long they were collapsing on themselves (yep, that long). Had fish yeet themselves out and not noticed in time (found a dried up Betta persephone on the floor about 2 weeks ago). Ignored that little patch of black beard algae until it took over the tank, after all, it doesn’t hurt the fish - well, until your plants are nearly covered and not doing their job anymore. That’s a major struggle to fight back from. You name it, I’ve probably been there, done that, didn’t even get the T shirt over all these decades. It happens to all of us sooner or later. We will do something that compromises the health of our pets. How we handle that and learn from it is what makes us better aquarists, eventually. We do have to absorb those lessons and not ignore the results of our actions or our inactivity. I’ll be honest, mine is usually an inactivity - feeling burned out at work, about life in general, or just too tired to get everything done that’s on my “to do” list. I often feel like I’m always trying to catch up on things. Lists help me, but I have to take the time to make lists, then I have to pay attention to the lists. Too many big things on the list and I get stuck in “getting ready” mode instead of moving into actually doing mode. So then I make lists within lists so each thing is smaller and more achievable. I’m at lists within lists for the Offish that I’ve been trying to do for over a year. But I got some things done today (well, technically yesterday) and I’ll get more done tomorrow (later today? 😝). And I’ve got a rare Sunday off, so I’ll get more done on Sunday, too, since it’s been raining too much to play paintball. 😉 Might even get water changes done on every tank this week by the time I’m done! Maybe. 😆 Definitely getting my linear air pump and air manifold set up tomorrow for my rack. That will make it easier to move once I make a space for it to move to in the Offish. Might go crazy and work on resetting my volcano tank. It’s a mess right now. And my list grows. But as long as I keep growing and keep pushing, keep learning overall, and keep learning my limits, that’s what counts. I’ve bred more fish in the last 3 years than I ever did “back in the day”. So I guess that’s at least some progress in growing as a fishkeeper. Now if I could just keep up with my lists a little better. 😆

@Colu and @nabokovfan87 have it all correct. Salt, antibiotics, and more aeration - either one @Colu listed is appropriate for fin rot but if you don’t see pretty fast improvement you’ll need Maracyn-2 in the food as soon as possible. Kanaplex / Kanamycin does no good in the food since it’s not absorbed from the gut but it will treat externally for fin rot or surface skin infections. Once infection gets inside the body tissues it may not penetrate from outside well enough to resolve a deep body tissue infections. Maracyn-2 is absorbed from food so it will get fin or body infections as long as it’s not a resistant bacteria. The plants you’ve added are a good idea overall but may be affected by high doses of salt. You can go up to about 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons before most plants are affected but if you go higher dose than that, your plants will likely suffer. Can you separate the sick fish into a hospital tank so you can treat only that one? Your other barbs don’t really look as bright as they should, so I do think you need at least low dose salt, more water changes, and more aeration in that tank, possibly more biofiltration since you should not have any nitrites as @nabokovfan87 mentioned. You’ve likely had an ammonia spike in order to get a nitrite spike. If you can move the sick fish, you can monitor more easily and treat just that one at the higher dose of salt and with the antibiotics. The other fish will likely respond to more water changes, more aeration, and light dose salt, plus avoiding ammonia / nitrite spikes. What’s your filter in the tank? You said it’s a 29 gallon, is it only the 4 barbs in there and no other fish? That’s a very, very light bioload if you’re feeding appropriately. You really shouldn’t have any ammonia or nitrite spikes and your nitrates should be very minimal. What was your previous water change volume and schedule? I’ve got over 30 guppies and had 8 juvenile bristlenose plecos in a 10 gallon (overfiltered) and all doing well. I just moved all the young bristlenoses today as I was feeling like I was pushing too much for the filtration to get reliable growth from them. I have another 10 G with 2 young adult small species plecos (only get to 5”, currently about 4”), about 30 young bristlenose fry and 10 otocinclus plus recently added a single male guppy for mosquito control since I saw a couple larvae in yet another pleco only tank. This tank also has massive biofiltration for the size tank and all are doing well with very low nitrates, no ammonia, no nitrites. Water changes not as often as they probably should be for optimal growth but I have to fertilize to keep the plants going. Lots of plants in the tanks. Most of my tanks aren’t this loaded, I use those as an extreme example. There has to be something going very wrong if you only have 4 barbs in a 29 G with ammonia and nitrite spikes with fairly high nitrates. Help us narrow down the issues with more information about your tank, your filter(s), your tap water parameters, your feeding schedule and amounts, any other inhabitants, anything you can think of that might matter.

I was going to suggest exactly this. Turn the filter off for a bit, then turn it back on after your set time. Some WiFi timers will have a setting that will do that for you so you don’t forget to turn it back on.

It’s not really about disinfecting for me but I don’t want to get planaria in a tank again, nor hydra that could get unintentionally transferred to my live food culture tanks, or get scuds in shrimp only tanks, or MTS in any tanks, really. I’m rarely treating for algae in new plants but I also discovered that even if RR doesn’t kill Wolffia or duckweed, it will float it pretty reliably so it can be more easily found and removed. Pest free is all I’m looking for and RR does that very well. I’m not looking for bacteria free tanks, I add beneficial bacteria semi regularly to tanks and make sure to add them frequently to tanks that are sitting fishless waiting to be quarantine tanks.

They don’t seem to be reproducing but it’s hard to tell since I rarely see them. I see them so seldom that I have doubts if they’re in there so I look in all the corners with a flashlight and usually see at least 1 or 2 in each tank. But I have plans to redo the volcano tank and any fish I find in there will be going into the other 6 G cube so all the sunfish will be together. I know I have at least 2 females in the Buce 6 G and I think 2 males in the volcano tank, so maybe they’ll make babies when I put them together. I put plenty of what I thought was each gender in each tank but I have to think I probably lost some along the way or I would see them more often. Hopefully with more together they might be bolder and become more visible. I’m also thinking about switching to frogbit instead of the red root floaters in that tank. They get longer roots and I think the sunfish might appreciate that.

Truth right there.

This is such a generous gift! Way to go, @Shadow, with paying it forward! You’re a good human!

Mine in my 2 G and 3 G shrimp tanks are reproducing by the time they hit small pea sized - just over 1/4” or around 5 mm maybe. Because that’s the size they always seem to get to before I get them pulled. It’s hard to say how long it takes to get there since I can’t track them from hatching. They hatch too tiny and too many of them to track. I’d guess somewhere around 4-5 weeks from hatch to breeding size. Another couple months at least to what I USED to think of as “adult” size when their growth slows down quite a bit. They do keep slowly growing until they die and the biggest one I’ve grown so far was a smidge over 3/4” across. If you look close at the pic in my 3 G that I posted I now consider that size breeding age and I’m about a week past being in time to get the “big ones” out because I now have a ton of new babies scattered over the walls of that tank. Missed my timing again! 😆 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have a few cories that have had barbel issues but they were from infections not related to substrate. One of my oldest bronzes developed an infection in a bare bottom tank even when there were fry growing up in there that never had a problem at all. And a couple of my sterbais in my angel tank don’t have barbels from when they got an infection and they’re on “smooth” pool filter sand. They are long since over the infection but barbels didn’t grow back. I barely saved the fish! And no, the infections weren’t related. They occurred almost 2 years apart. I truly don’t think substrate has anything to do with cory barbels. In nature they skim over and hunt food over all different kinds of surfaces.

That’s definitely the guy for the Suss ropes!

I’ll never figure out why some people are so flaky. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Sorry, are we inconveniencing you by trying to pay you money? So very, very sorry. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Your tank is going to look spectacular at least! 😃

It’s always so adorable when fry start popcorning off the bottom. That was the best part about raising all those crazy Jack Dempsey fry.

Just in case anybody was worried about how “sharp” black Diamond blasting sand (BDBS) is or isn’t and how it could affect cories barbels I’ve got a couple pics for you. I see this question come up regularly and I don’t think it’s an issue at all. I had a couple cories be a little more cooperative after feeding the other day so I snapped a couple pics. These cories have been raised on BDBS since they hatched in this tank. My BEL boys have settled down a bit and the water is more clear than it’s been in a couple weeks so I got decent pics. These are just a couple of my bronze cories, Corydoras aeneus. They all have fabulous barbels and so do the trilineatus in the same tank. The tri’s are less bold than the bronzes, so no pics today. But I have cory zoomies and eggs again after the weather front that came through yesterday. I haven’t even done a water change. 😆 Enjoy the fabulous “mustaches” on these kids - probably both girls, BTW.