andieb

My fish's face seems to have a really bad injury or fungal infection and I'm not sure how to treat her, any advice would be really appreciated! It's a Corydoras habrosus, I've had her for ~6 months I think. I had them on a mix of CaribSea Super Naturals Sunset Gold and Moonlight sand in part of the tank and Fluval Stratum in the back half of the tank. But I had switched the sand to Quickrete play sand maybe 3 months ago, then noticed some of my corys' barbels were waring so about 2 months ago, thinking it was the substrate change, I switched back to straight CaribSea Super Naturals Moonlight. I can go to the aquarium store tonight to pick up what ever treatment you guys have had luck with. I live in Canada though so some treatments are not available here so it would be really helpful if you could let me know any medical ingredients that work, so I can look for meds that are available here that have the same medical ingredient. I've heard that Aquarium Salt works well but I've also heard that corydoras are sensitive to it. I have Pimafix but I hate that stuff, but if others have had good luck with it with a similar infection, I'll give it another try. I set up a Tupperware tub with sand and some plant cover and a bubbler that I could move the fish into to treat her, if you guys think that's the right thing to do. Water Parameters: pH: 7.2 Nitrates: Almost 0 Hardness: Hard - Very Hard (150) Nitrite: 0 Ammonia: 0 KH/Buffer: 80 ppm Water Temperature: 77.5 F Thank you for any and all help/advice you can offer!!

Thanks so much guys, Just wanted to make sure, but got a good laugh too.

Hi there! Happy Friday! I was just wondering if this level of plumpness is healthy... This is one of my female honey gouramis: And this is a female corydoras habrosus: Both fish are acting completely normal and have been this level of plump for about 2 months for the gourami and about 4 months for the cory. I just want to make sure everything ok to prevent things from going south. Am I feeding too much? Or could it be a disease? I feed about a pinch of food twice a day. Most common things I feed are Spirulina Bug Bites or Bottom Feeder Formula. I also feed Omega shrimp pellets, algea wafers once or twice a week, and ~once a week or two weeks I feed tubefex worms, and once a month I feed frozen baby brine shrimp. Thank you!

Hi @Breezy! To clarify, do you have corydoras pygmaeus or corydoras habrosus? I ended up losing 4 habrosus total to fungus and lethargy, so I only have 4 left but they've been healthy since. I have 2 females, which are very large and round, and two males, which are small and slender, almost half the size of the females. All are similar colour, however the turn pail when they're stressed. When ever they're pail, I try to figure out what could be causing it. I never found out for sure what caused the first 4 to die or why the remaining 4 survived, but I made some changes to my set up to try to stop the deaths. These are the changes I made: - I added a small sponge filter to help cycle the water down near the substrate - Gravel vac the substrate really carefully every week - Turned the temp down to 76 C since fungus grows more at higher temps - Added aragonite to my filter to stabilize the pH Ultimately tho, my theory for what happened was that this species is just really delicate and sensitive to changes in water parameters. If you also have habrosus, it's possible that the smaller ones are males and the bigger ones are females, but my males and females are the same colour. I'm not sure why yours might be dying but here are some thoughts. Check their barbels to make sure they aren't worn down. If the barbels are worn down, it could interfere with feeding and might explain why some of yours are small and maybe the one died from not getting enough food. Do you have swings in your parameters? Like for example, does your pH change gradually between water changes? When you do a water change does your pH change? What is your KH? How much do your nitrates increase between water changes? I suggest trying 2-3 tsp of aragonite in your filter if your KH is low and your pH is swinging. If you're nitrates go above 10-20 between water changes I would say, either do more frequent water changes or try adding seachem stability, water lettuce or other plants that are known for taking up a lot of nitrates.

Thanks for your replies and for all the pics of your honey gouramis, they are the absolute cutest. It's so nice to meet some of the other honey gourami people on here! @Hobbit Literally everything you described your fish doing, down to the female being the one who's aggressive over food, is the same as my fish. MAJOR UPDATE. I think you were correct, that she possibly ate the nest. Because today: He built a new bubble nest!!! This was not here yesterday when I fed dinner. He's trying to coax her towards it right now, but she's very cautious to follow him into his side of the tank and keeps turning back. Thanks for your recommendation, I'll follow your advice and do a bit of rescapement before the next spawn 😎 I also will ask my sister to come every day next time I'm away so the fish don't get so hungry. 55 gal is my dream set up, I'd have all the same tiny fish as now but just with so much more room. And I agree 100% that honey gouramis are insanely smart. That's actually why I chose them. In videos, you can see them inspecting things and thinking. Plus where my other fish are skittish around me, the gouramis learned super quickly that I feed them and I'm no harm. They're not scared at all, even when I'm gravel vaccing they chase the bits of debris going up the vac tube. I adore them. Here they are back in the day when they *mostly* got along:

Yes, I'd love to get a second opinion... obviously would be thrilled if the solution was to get another female... but gotta be responsible. This is just a thought I had about honey gourami aggression... Wild-Type females are pail yellow/silver to grey/brown, with a fairly solid brown stripe down their side. According to wikipedia the two colour varieties "sunset" and "gold" are selectively bred, not occurring in nature. I was sold the "gold" variety. Here are pics of my female and male, and a pic of a wild-type female honey grouami. The biggest difference between the wild-type and "gold" variety is in the female in my opinion. She's way more bright yellow/gold then the wild-type female and brown stripe is faint, and usually completely disappears when she's not stressed or interacting with the male. Anyways, I specialized in animal behaviour in my undergrad and one of the studies we read about was in sticklebacks, where mature males develop bright red underparts. Anyways, a behaviourist was keeping sticklebacks and noticed that every morning they'd all go nuts at the side of the tank facing the window. He realized that the fish were seeing the mail truck outside, which was red. He tested them with other red objects and found that the colour red triggered aggression in the male sticklebacks. The theory is that male sticklebacks evolved to associate red with rival males. When I first got my fish, I found it really hard to sex them. As they've gotten older the male developed black underparts, but the female looks largely the same and kind of looks like a juvenile male wild-type honey grouami. Maybe male honey gouramis use the brown line and lack of yellow to distinguish females from rival males. At least to me, she looks more like a male than the females he's evolved to recognize. He might be mistaking her for a male and her manish good looks are making him angry? Has anyone observed more male->female aggression in gold honey gouramis compared to wild-types? Sorry for the long post... I just find this stuff cool.

Thanks for your reply. There are a lot of floating plants, red root floaters and water lettuce. Maybe I'll try to find some other plants, like purple camboba that might break up the line of sight in the tank a bit better. The only other thing in the tank is 4 corydoras habrosus (I will get more, just Covid-19 is causing stock from South American to be limited at least there I live). Would adding a third gourami be a bad idea?

Hm I have a 20 gal long, could I fit another female honey gourami and would the tank still be nice and spacious for them? Do you think that would decrease the aggression? Why/how does adding another female decreases the aggression? Sorry so many questions, just a little a lot worried for her!

Hi guys, I'm so sad. I have a male and female pair of honey gouramis. The male has always chased the female around but he's never hurt her before and he'd usually stop once she got over to "her side of the tank". I was having to feed them on opposite sides of the tank though because they can get territorial over food and the male started to "patrol" the place where I was feeding them before. However, most the time they co-existed together peacefully and they were doing spawning behaviour almost every day. I don't think they ever actually spawned though since they're still growing up. I went to my cottage this past weekend from Thursday night - Sunday night and had my sister come feed the fish on Saturday afternoon. When I got home, right away I noticed that everyone in the tank was very pail, even the male gourami, and the female gourami had injuries. I tried to include the best pictures I could take to show you the injuries. They don't appear to be life threatening, but a second opinion would be good cause I'm inexperienced. She has what looks like bruising or missing scales around her eye and missing scales on her back. Now that I've fed them 3 times since getting back, everyone is back to their normal colours. The female seems ok, but she's been hiding a lot. Because the male was never violent before, could it just be that maybe the stress of going hungry might have caused him to be more aggressive? I checked carefully and he doesn't have a bubble nest that I can see. Should I wait and see if things calm down or should I remove the female as soon as possible? I can move her to a 10 gal tank that just contains apple snails and plecos right now, but I'd rather do that only as a last resort because the gouramis bite the apple snail's antenna and the tank has higher current than is ideal for gouramis. Thanks for you input!

I made this riccia fluitans.... rug

I like the tetra idea. Another option for a centre piece fish is a group of pearl gourmis. They might be too small though... but if I had a bigger tank, that's what I'd want. I love putting smaller fish in a big tank, especially things like gourmis cause I love seeing them explore every part of the tank. An option for the corys is corydoras julii, I think they're so cute and pretty. Your theme could be spots maybe lol

Thanks so much! Sorry to hear about your losses but glad to hear that your newest additions are doing well. That's interesting to hear that maybe the instability was the problem, and that would make sense in my case because my pH kept steadily decreasing between water changes but now that I added the aragonite the pH has been dead-on. I also added water lettuce which has kept nitrates consistently super low. I'm planning to add more habrosus, and this time I'll try adding them straight to my established tank and see how they do. Thanks again!

I agree with the comments above that I think your snail would benefit from more calcium. I don't have any experience with supplimenting snail diet, but I've heard they make calcium rich foods that you could try. I do have experience with changing water chemistry to better suit snails though. Your water is soft and slightly acidic, and your KH is on the lower side. This has two consequences: 1. Low KH means that dissolved calcium in the water is probably low and 2. KH buffers/stabilizes pH, so it's possible that your pH might dip down even lower at times. Those conditions might be causing his new shell growth to be thinner than the old growth and it might be causing those little white dots on his shell, which look like pits where his shell has been dissolved slightly because of low pH. I had similar issue in my tank with low KH and unstable/low pH with apple snails. I tried a couple things, 1. cuttlebone - would not recommend, it stunk like dead fish if it wasn't completely submerged but that was hard cause they float but many people recommend it and say that snails will actually eat it. 2. Aragonite or crushed coral (basically straight calcium carbonate) - I'm using aragonite right now to increase my KH and stabilize the pH, it hasn't really increased the pH but it's increased the KH from 0 to 60 ppm KH (which is still considered low) and my pH is much more stable now. In my snail tank, I just put a sprinkling of aragonite on the substrate (no more than a couple teaspoons at first since adding too much can increase pH too much. An even better way is to add the aragonite in a filter bag to your filter that way you can remove it if it's increasing you pH too much for your other tank inhabitants. I add a little more as it dissolves and as I can gauge how much it's increasing the KH/pH. Hope that helps! Apple snails are honestly the best.

Happy Monday to you. Looking online I'm seeing a lot of differing information about what temp to keep corydoras habrosus at. Does anyone know what temp they thrive at tho? Thank you! Temps listed on various sites: - 20 – 26 °C / 68 - 79 ° F - 22° - 25° C / 72° - 79° F - 25°C - 27°C / 77°F - 80°F - 22° - 30°C / 72 – 86 °F Optional rant about my personal experience that you can ignore: From my personal experience I have a feeling that cooler is better for habrosus. I had my tank at 78 °F, and my cories were dying from fungus/lethargy one by one each week. I heard that fungus likes higher temps so I lowered the temp to 76 °F and the deaths abruptly stopped and my remaining 4 corys have survived for the past 2-3 weeks. However in my desperation to stop the deaths, I threw scientific method out the window and at the same time that I lowered the temp, I also: added 3 tsp of aragonite to the filter which seems to have stabilized the pH and increased KH from practically 0 to ~3 KH and slowly rising, started gravel vac'ing aggressively once a week, and added a sponge filter on the still side of the tank to increase circulation near the substrate. So I have no ability to know if lowering the temp is what stopped the deaths. Possibly these 4 corys were just the healthiest/hardiest to begin with and they survived on their own vim and vigor.

Thanks so much for all your suggestions!

I meant hypancistrus vandragti, L280, Dwarf Spiny Pleco - I like them because they only get about 2" max length

Hm this is tricky and I've been reading a lot about this cause I'm having similar trouble with my sunset honey gouramis. Personally, I would have said that the fish in your picture is a female honey gourami because it has a brown stripe down its side. I'm currently looking at my male and female gouramis and their dorsal/anal fins are almost identical in shape. I'm wondering if this method of sexing applies to other gourami species but less so to honey gouramis. I can confirm that I have a male and a female because they do a mating dance routine thing almost daily. When they're doing this, the female gets a brown stripe down her side (at any other time this stripe is not visible - although they are sunset variety and I think for wild-types the brown line is more visible). As for the male, he never has a brown line down the side of his body.

lol good catch, sorry, I meant 76 F! I was told that dwarf snow ball or spiny plecos thrive at 79-84 F, but I have no personal experience and am not sure if that is accurate. What temp do you keep yours at and what species are they? I'd be interested in other pleco species that stay small and tolerate relatively cooler temps. Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion. I might consider a schooling fish, but I do sort of like having only a few fish so that I can recognize each individual.

Hi guys! Would love your suggestions for what fish to add to my tank - or whether I should add anything. The tank: 20 gal long, heavily planted, HOB filter, and sponge filter, driftwood and rocks, lots of hiding spots. One side of the tank has moderate flow, the side where the HOB lets out, the other side is pretty still, the side with the sponge filter. Substrate is fluval stratum with a patch of sand near the front. No algae, water is clear, light is moderate to low. Parameters: Temp - 76 C, pH - 6.8, GH - 140, KH - 40 ppm (currently trying to increase KH slowly) Current inhabitants: 4 corydoras habrosus - I plan on increasing this to 10 when they're back in stock at my LFS, 2 cherry shrimps that appeared in the tank randomly, 1 ghost shrimp, 2 honey gouramis (a male and a female) - they're aggressive to each other but they don't bother the shrimps or corys, not sure how they'd react to another fish in the mid/upper part of the tank. Things I've ruled out, correct me if I'm wrong tho: Snails - I have a ton of pond/ramshorn/malaysian trumpet snails. I had 3 apple snails but I had to move them to their own set up bc the gouramis were biting their antenna, Dwarf pleco - my tank is too cold, and I don't want to increase the temp cause when the tank was warmer the cories were dying and getting fungus, Hillstream loach - I heard other's saying they can be aggressive towards other bottom feeders and my corys are small and helpless. I'd like to add maybe a single fish or a pair of one type. Thank you!

I read that it was safe too, that's why I thought it would be ok to use but now that I've dug a little deeper I see other people have experienced similar things. Weirdly, all the little tiny pond and ramshorn snails in the tank are fine. Also, just as an update, the snails are ok now. They're walking and around and eating and now they're actually mating... lord.

That might explain why the snails at first were syphoning at the top of the water. But they're still syphoning even now that they're not in the tea tree oil water. Can tea tree oil affect the snails ability to do oxygen exchange under water?

Upadte: WOW that was stressful. When I came back from picking up the pimafix from the store and the fish had fallen to the bottom of the tank and he was being eaten by one of the snails. By the time I got the snail away the fish was dead and a chunk of his side had been eaten. Anyways, I decided to treat the tank anyways just because I figured the fungus could be in the tank and the other fish could have it but not be showing it yet. I added exactly the dose described on the bottle, and almost imminently my snails went to the surface and started gulping air. Over time, they started doing odd behaviours like coming out of their shells and then retracting back in over and over as if something was hurting/startling them every time they came out. I decided that it the pimafix was hurting them, and I needed to move them to the spare tank. I had to change the water in the spare tank first though. The entire time I was prepping the spare tank, one of my snails basically just sat on the floor of the tank convulsing. I moved them into the spare tank as fast as I could, and while moving them they were dripping a lot of slime. All three are now just lying on their sides convulsing. I'm really worried and it's horrible to watch. I read that pimafix was safe for snails but from my personal experience I will NEVER use it again on a tank with snails. If you are thinking of putting it in a tank with apple snails, I'd suggest removing the snails to a safe tank or remove the sick fish and treat it somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the store modified my order because apparently they don't have aquarium salt in stock even though it was on their website so I may only have pimafix tomorrow 😞 I hope it still works. I guess using table salt is off the table?

Hi guys, I'd really appreciate your advice. One of my corys is acting lethargic and I noticed that it has white fluffy fungus on its fin. I read in this article about treatments: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/fish-fungus but I can't find Maracyn and Ich-X at the fish store near my house, and it's closed now anyways. I have a feeling my fish is not going to last very long since he's not moving much atm. I still placed a curb side pick up order for API Pimafix Fish Fungal Infection Treatment and aquarium salt that I can pick up tomorrow. The article mentions that using salt is effective but it doesn't mention whether it's safe for corydoras. I have a 10 gal tank with just some decorations, a heater, a filter, and sand that is otherwise empty that I could move the fish into to treat it. I was thinking of starting with treatment level 1 explained in this article: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish. Or I could use the Pimafix.... if I use this, I could treat the cory in the main tank without moving it, cause I read that it's safe for shrimps and snails. Is this correct? Which option do you guys think is best? Or are there any other options? Thank you so much for your help!