Lifeisgood

Since having a heater malfunction that nearly cooked my fancy goldfish, I have shifted my other tanks to running with no heaters. I have a 125 that was stocked with rainbow fish and Hillstream loaches but am now wanting a smaller schooling fish that would do well in cooler temperatures. The background Ian’s substrate are black and I was hoping to find a smaller fish with some color. But living in Michigan maybe danios are my best option if I do not want to use a heater.

Has anyone kept emerald rasboras at 68 degrees F? I see rasboras listed at different temperature ranges. Just wondered what experiences people have had with them.

Cool! Thank you for your help! Now I will double check the make up of the pellets and see about making a mesh bag to put them into my HOB. The goldfish tank has bb Algae that I am fighting all of the time. I am feeding less, controlling light and now if I can reduce ammonia and nitrates I am hoping it will be better. The Purigen is so fine it clogs up in the fine mesh bags too quickly.

Thanks for interacting with me about this idea. I am remembering back from something I looked into earlier this past summer. So I will look closer at the package. So when you were mentioning the use of zeolite to remove nitrates and nitrite from tanks, you were referring to water tanks for supplying water for drinking and cooking right? Not fish tanks? As I looked at the video it refers to koi ponds. So if the pellets that I found are truly only zeolite, I may be able to use them in my HOB as I would use bio rings. And I could recharge them from time to time with salt. Is that how you are seeing it?

It’s interesting because according to directions on both products you can use chlorine bleach to recharge both Purigen and the zeolite kitty litter pellets. Hmmm…maybe it is worth looking into a bit more?

Out of the box question: My daughter was trying out a new litter box for her cat- “Tidy Cat Breeze.” It has a grid insert in the litter box where you are supposed to pour pellets that are made of the same thing that Purigen is. The cat pees on the pellets and the pellets absorb or neutralize the ammonia from the pee and the urine is soaked up by a pad that is in the bottom of the pan. I was wondering if those pellets would work to use like you would use bio rings—but they would also have another benefit in that they neutralize or soak up ammonia too? Is there any reason that that wouldn’t be a good idea? The company makes two different pellet types. One is scented and one is not. I would not want to use the scented option? I have tried to use Purigen in my HOB for a large goldfish tank. They seem to need extra filtration to keep water parameters good. But the Purigen is so fine and the mesh bags don’t allow good water flow through them. What do you guys think??? I did not mean to put the question mark after what I meant as a statement: I would NOT want to use the scented pellets.

Hi Colu—here’s the update after a few weeks. I only had one more fish die. That is wonderful! Thank you for helping me through this crisis!

I will try that! And thank you for your advice. I really appreciate it, and will give you an update after a few days. 😊

The pictures appear a bit redder than the fish really are. They should be silvery and transparent ish. There are less dead today. The temp is about 65 degrees F. They have never been heated for over two years. Just room temperature. I fed them some today. There are about 20 dwarf neon rainbow fish with them. None of the rainbow died over night. I do 1/3 water change daily. I don’t know if I should feed or not. Or what I can do to help them.

125 gallon tank has been set up for two and one half years and became over stocked due to over enthusiastic fish breeding. I noticed a bad smell but fish seemed to be fine. Kept up partial water changes but likely over fed fish because of worrying about babies not getting enough. All that to say—green water ensued and then died. Viscosity of water changed because bubbles were collecting at the surface. Tried a larger water change. Noticed the underside of the Hillstream loaches flesh looked cloudy instead of silvery and translucent. Saw the first dead fish. I drained the water, caught the fish and put them in large tub of dechlorinated water with air stone to aerate the water. I have been cleaning out the fish that die and doing partial water changes daily to keep the water clean. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how else I can help the loaches recover? Medications? Or any other ideas? They have a large Annubias plant and some narrow jungle Val with them in their tub.

I bought a young goldfish labeled as an Oranda from a box store. It was smaller than yours but had a very thin wen as well. I think when we get them from stores that don’t take pains to get well bred goldfish we end up with hybrids. But your fish is beautiful anyway and my little “Dot” is now quite large but still has a thin wen. Oh well, she still greets me eagerly and is fun to watch.

😅. Good! Does your tank get any direct or frequent brightness from sunlight?

I am thinking that it would help not to squeeze the filter sponge into your water. It seems that you are putting waste back in that you are trying to filter out. Also, maybe cut back on feeding? Watch and see if your fish eat up what you give them—or if the excess settles into the substrate. Nerite snails have cleaned my plants up well in the past. If you don’t mind the white eggs they lay on the hard scape. Does your tank have exposure to sunlight?

My cat caught a mouse one night and brought it up to my second floor bedroom and let it go on my bed. I realized what happened when the mouse ran across the covers over my husband and me!😳 Here is a picture of another of my cats “window shopping”.