MBStevens

Yeah the spot is not red, it's just white/clearish.

Got a new pair of juvenile German Blue Rams in 2 days ago. Female's tail fin remains clamped, and she has one single spot on her side fin. No additional spots spreading. Pic shows her tail fin. Acts normal and happy, eating well, exploring all areas of tank actively, good coloring, and mildly picks on her male counterpart. I'm wondering if she's just still adjusting to the stress of having been shipped in a bag for 5 days. Temp 85-86, ph 7.2, soft water (90% RO mixed w/ well water tap), no ammonia, nitrite, 5ppm or less nitrate. Well established and mature tank 1.5+ years old.

I dedicated a tank to German Blue Rams (not received yet). My natural well water is super high pH and kH (8.6 pH and off the charts kH), so I decided to get a small RO/DI system which has worked well. I filled the tank with majority RO water, and only a few millimeters above the substrate of my well water (over 90% RO/DI water). For awhile, the tank seemed to be holding around 6.8 or 7.0 pH, with about 40ppm kH, but now it seems to be going up to 7.6 or 7.8 pH with 80ppm kH. WHAT THE HECK. I just want to keep rams and I want to provide the best possible environment for them. I can't figure out why my pH is creeping up like this. I understand that those parameters in themselves are not unreasonable/unacceptable for rams, but I do not want pH swings when I do water changes with RO water. I don't want to have them going from 7.8 pH down to 6.8, obviously. That is my main problem, although rest assured I sure do want my 6.8 or 7.0 pH since I spend money and effort getting RO water pumped out! In the tank I have driftwood that leeches tannins, a small sponge filter with airstone, plants, dose Easy Green and root tabs, and have plain black gravel for substrate. I also have some rocks in there. I got both types (I don't know the name) from local fish stores. My guess is that those rocks could be raising the ph/kh? Is that common with normal rocks used for aquascaping? I want to have a pretty tank...but now I'm wondering if I should take them out and see if it goes down?

Thanks guys. I think I will move to a different tank and start using aquarium salt while I'm waiting on the Ich-x, and hope that the salt does the trick. I am pretty sure it is Ich and not Epistylis.

I got some new apisogramma borelli opals the other day (1 male, 2 females), and they all have several white spots on their fins ONLY. No spots on their bodies. It has remained about the same amount of spots over the last 3 days with very small amount of increase if any. They were very stressed as I moved them into their new tank. I wondered if this was stress ich vs. regular ich. I can't find information on ich being only on the fins and not spreading to the body. They are all eating well, not rubbing or flashing on anything, and seem to be content in their tank now, with plenty of hiding places and caves with rocks and driftwood, and live plants. Temp is 80 degrees. No ammonia, nitrite, 5 ppm of nitrate. pH of 8.2, hard kH and medium soft level gH. I am slowly increasing the temperature over time, and am waiting on ich-X to arrive in case I need to dose the tank. I wanted to wait a few days and see what happened before dosing though. Any thoughts?

Got a few new cardinal tetras to add to my school the other day; now there's at least 13 or so. They've been oddly shy all of a sudden since adding them and taking away the cherry barbs that were fighting in here before (I don't like aggression in my tanks, so as sad as I was to lose them, I took them back to the LFS to hopefully be happier in another tank). I thought getting a bigger school would make them even more comfortable but it somehow did the opposite. Now they hide all the time; I can barely even get anyone to come out and eat food. They will only approach food when I'm far away from the tank (by then of course it's basically on the substrate). I'm confused by this suddenly shy behavior. The only thing I can think of is the cherry barbs must have been serving as a dither for the cardinals. My hope has been to eventually get a pair of German Blue Rams in here. I wondered if getting the rams would likely help the cardinals, if they can serve as a sort of reverse-from-typical dither fish. Usually cardinals are suggested as a great dither fish for rams, but I'm wondering if it could potentially go the other way too. Thoughts? What I've done to try to help the cardinals so far is add some floating plants (salvinia), lower the light intensity down 5% on my fluval 3.0, and put a sponge intake on my hob to slow the flow rate. I'm thinking my next tactic is to try getting a dither fish. Have considered some pygmy corydoras. But I don't want to add too much really as the GBRs are my ultimate goal. (It's a 20 gallon so there's size limitations.) I'm super disappointed by how shy these guys are; they are stunning and my tank looks gorgeous with them in it but I can't enjoy them this way!

Hey Dad! Technically fish poop is a fertilizer, too. Perhaps feeding more can serve as more fertilizer for your plants? And why do you need to get your nitrates up? Unless you're seeing plant deficiencies in which case it would be a sign that they need something more. **Are you testing ammonia using the ammonia test strips from Co-Op, or only using the API liquid test kit? It is common with the API liquid test kit to get a false .25 reading actually. Very common. If that is your only reading of ammonia, and your Co-Op strips are fine, I would honestly not give much credence to the API ammonia reading.

Gotcha, I didn't know if I was missing some special ingredient or something haha. I've been soaking my wood after having boiled it several times for about a week now to get some tannins out. So they're new but at least will have soaked a bit. I'll use bacter ae to get some nice biofilm growing on it when i throw it in the tank tomorrow.

Yeah I'm pretty positive I have at least 1 male and multiple females. I've thought about increasing the colony, maybe I'll buy a few more to increase my chances. I don't keep any fish in there with them. Just a mystery snail and little baby ramshorns and bladder snails.

What do you mean by seasoning the wood??

I want to change up my cherry shrimp tank a little bit. Same substrate and filtration and plants but I want to switch out my hardscape (keep rock pile but switch out spider wood for bigger driftwood pieces). I haven't gotten them to breed yet, and it's been about 3ish months since having them (about 5 shrimp in a 10 gallon). I know they like things to stay the same to feel comfortable. Am I shooting myself in the foot to switch things up a bit or should I just go for it? I really want to see a ton of shrimp in there because it's so boring having to look hard and maybe seeing a shrimp or two in there (not to mention the fact that my husband keeps asking why they aren't breeding yet). In there I have a sponge filter, gravel substrate, 1/2 and 1/2 distilled water and my well water (was extremely hard so I made it more reasonable this way hardness wise), spider wood, guppy grass, dwarf lilies, a nice rock pile where they can (and do) hide, Java fern, Java moss, and a few anubias. I feed them a teeny tiny bit of bacter AE every other day, and occasionally a teeny bit of quality flake. Water parameters are ph 8.4ish, 5-10 nitrate (0 amm, 0 nitrite), 25ppm GH, 300ppm kH. I only do about a 10% water change once a month to try to keep things stable. I am open to other tips if you see something I seem to be missing.

I feel so bad. I got guppy babies for free with a purchase of some cherry shrimp the other day (there were so many in the tank they couldn't separate them from the shrimp). I was planning on starting my first outdoor pond, and I thought, hey, I could throw these guys in there instead of keeping them with the shrimp (because I'm trying like heck to get my shrimp to feel comfy enough to make some babies here eventually). But I live in Ohio. And of course it's freezing cold this weekend at the end of freakin May, (rainy in the 40s and 50s--it WAS in the high 80s!!) and those poor guppies are out there and may have died already due to how cold the water temps are. I just feel really bad. 😕

Can anyone tell me how to get uploaded photos upright? They were downloaded upright....and then on the forum they flip upside down....

I redid my 20 gallon and it makes me incredibly happy.

Sorry no, that was ppm!! Quite low degrees, 2, or 3 degrees each I think?