anewbie
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Posts posted by anewbie
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I have some sort of serious bacteria infection that is rotting the fishes away. The only other sympton is some white dots (episily?); it has been active at least 14 days - i've been waiting to see if water changes will allow the fishes to fight it off. The keri are taking the brunt of the disease; the ember show no real symption at all but one died (i ahve 19 1/2 inch ones). The eque cory - one has the rear tail rot but otherwise no symptons the other 10 or so show no symptons but i think things are getting worse from the keri which have lost most of their dorsal and tail fin. The disease started as white dot disease but i don't think it was ick and has now moved to serious fin and body rot. I'm not concern about the saving the keri tetra they were near eol and i don't love them but i do want to treat it before the cory eques and ember tetra start getting sick.
Not sure if i should treat with rid ick (which is effective against epistylis ); api body cure; fritz maracyn or maybe api melafix. So many different choices and ingrediants.
I'll probably order on amazon so i can start treating wednesday or maybe stop at petco if they have something in stock - any suggestions? I know no pictures - the rot is ragged not smooth on the keri but it is definitely impacting the body; the fishes that i moved to a larger aquarium seemed to have recovered on their own but the ones named above i can't move.
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@Colu seems to be the resident expert but maybe someone else has a suggestion. I might have a packet left of api general cure but not enough for a full treatment of a 29.
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On 1/8/2024 at 3:56 PM, JoeQ said:
It is on the substrate because of the silicates leaching from your (new) substrate. After 4 months, even though your tank is cycled, your substrate is still in its infancy. Silicates are bga crack
So should i treat it with chemclean or just ignore it and it will eventually go away ?
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On 1/8/2024 at 3:43 PM, Seattle_Aquarist said:
Hi @anewbie
I am 95% positive that what you have is cyanobacteria (BGA). Clean off some of those leaves in your pictures and take a good sniff. Since cyanobacteria is part algae it will certainly grow more quickly with more light.
The only other thing I can think of that would cause that kind of discoloration of the substrate would be the substrate is becoming anaerobic which is typically caused by excess waste buildup in the substrate. If you do some poking in the area of discoloration and gas bubbles rise from the area take a sniff. If they smell like sulfur dioxide that would be confirmation of anaerobic conditions. But I still think it is BGA. -Roy
I did take a good smell and it has a very light smell - my sense of smell is fairly strong. It could be cyano but i'm not sure. As for the substrate i did stir it up down to the glass bottom in the areas where there were not plants. No bubbles also the fish load is fairly light. This doesn't mean it isn't cyano but i've had cyano before and the colouring is similar but the texture feels different. I wish there was a good way to identify for sure - the reason the fish load is low is because the b. cupido (wc) are fairly sensitive so i've been making sure to keep the ntirate level below detection (with api liquid - so basically below 5). In the past i've had aquariums with nitrate as high as 50 but i've been doing things different recently as i moved into larger aquariums and more sensitive fish.
I'm not saying it isn't cyano bacteria but i dont' understand why it is forming. The last time i had it - i had clear anerobic pockets with a hard compacting substrate. The only negative to this substrate is depth as it ended up a little deeper than i planned. Also ti seems to grow stronger where i put root tabs (thrive) but maybe that is to be expected.
Is there some sort of blue-green algae that is not cyano ?
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On 1/8/2024 at 11:42 AM, Seattle_Aquarist said:
Hi @anewbie
Sorry for the delayed response, I was on vacation with my family over the holidays.
What I see in your photos is blue-green algae, aka cyanobacteria, which is a unique type of 'algae' in that it is part plant and part animal (bacteria). I occasionally get it in my tanks like I suspect many hobbyists do, usually when I am 1) delinquent in doing my weekly water changes, 2) not changing sufficient water and allowing a build up of nitrogenous waste, 3) not cleaning my filter as often as I should. I have also found it to occur when I have high light, insufficient plants, and/or poor water circulation.
Typically my first step is to physically remove as much of it manually. I gently remove it from the leaves putting a finger on each side of the leaf and lightly squeezing from the stem to the tip. Blue-Green Algae (BGA) comes off very easily, feels a little slimy, and has a pungent aroma. For the substrate I siphon off the areas that have BGA removing the BGA and some of the substrate. Then I add more substrate if needed.
After removing as much manually as I can I check to see if I have been lazy doing some of my maintenance, do a 50% water change, and clean my filter.
If the BGA consistently returns, and my maintenance and water circulation are good and the light isn't excessive, then I look at add additional remedies. Some folks have had success killing BGA using a antibiotic (erythromycin) however I try to avoid using antibiotics in my tanks because diseases can become resistant to them if used too frequently and their is already too much in our environmental wastewater. Also, if you use any sort of chemical remedy and too much of the BGA dies, then the dying BGA will deplete the tank of oxygen, the water will cloud, and the loss of fish may result.
About two months ago I had a bad outbreak of BGA in my 75 gallon discus tank. I had gotten lazy and not cleaned the three (3) Fluval 307 filters for about seven (7) months and I usually clean them about every two (2) months.....my bad. So I did what I suggested above, spent several hours manually removing the BGA from the leaves and hardscape and siphoned the BGA from the white pool filter sand substrate. I got out as much as I could but I knew I didn't get it all so I looked for an alternative to antibiotics. What I found was interesting.....combating one bacteria with another. I read about Dr. Tim's Cyanobacteria Treatment for BGA (link to PDF) and decided to try it. I had met Dr. Tim (Yes he has several science degrees) about 20 years ago at a aquatic expo in Seattle. He had just started his own company after 17 years as the Chief Science Officer of Aquaria Inc., the parent company of Marineland Aquarium Products, Aquarium Systems (Instant Ocean). His views on cyanobacteria were interesting but since his initial products were for saltwater applications I did not think too much of it.
I did my first experiment with Dr. Tim's in August with bad results. I used both products (Refresh and Waste Away) on a 45 gallon as lost about a dozen Dwarf Neon Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia praecoxis) - when they suggest starting with 1/2 dose on both products they mean it. The dying BGA / bacteria clouded the water and caused oxygen starvation.
In early November I decided to try again on my 75 gallon starting dosing at 1/4 dose and increasing slowly over a couple of weeks. The result was by Christmas almost all the BGA was gone and when I returned from vacation it had not returned. I will continue to use the product once or twice a month as 'maintenance' but I was very happy with the results. I found the best prices of both products on Amazon. Hope this helps! -Roy
I have used chemclean before with success on a 29; but before i go that far I want to make sure it is in-fact cyanobacteria. On another forum someone said the stuff stinks and you should smell a distinct odor but that does not seem to be the case here. The tank has virtually no nitrate and decent circulation. The light par was around 15 at the substrate but recently I raised it to 50 (this is after the start of this thread). I added some powerheads that were very strong (mostly to attack some surface duckweed) but that only seemed to make this stuff grow faster.
It returns in 24 hours after removal. The tank is nomally 180 gallons (4feetx4feetx18inches) and i do a religious 40 gallon water change weekly with ro water. The stocking is 8 b. cupido; 40 cory hastatus and 10ish apistogrammade (there is only one species).
Does this help with diagnostic ?
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This article has some information on them:
https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/micronemacheilus-cruciatus/
While they have the common name loach; they are not genus boita of which nearly all eat snails. There are of course fishes that are not from the genus boita that eat snails but anyway....
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Could be dwarf sag; hard to tell without a better picture and perhaps the roots.
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What size is the aquarium; if it is large you might return it as depending on the exact issue it might create undue pressure point - i can't really see what you are talking about so no clue if this is serious or not. If it is small it probably doesn't matter. A 10 is small a 55 is large everything in between is gradiant but 20 gallons of water on a wood floor can do $40,000 of damage.
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If the tank is very mature with lots of this and that you won't have to do much as mom will make sure the kids get fed. In my tank they dug their own home beneath a piece of drift wood but this requires you have relative soft substrate that is deep enough and some decent drift wood - this was their cave:
And this is mom looking after her brood; note that they don't use this cave other than a feeding area; the frys are returned to their cave shown above at night:
She was very attenative and kept very close eye on them 😉
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On 1/6/2024 at 9:20 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
I redid mine... Compare to the photo above. Based on what we were discussing and the "aeration" of the substrate as it were.
Left side of the tank is pretty course, right side is pretty fine, but there's a good mix and hopefully things improve.
I would try peroxide doses. In his journal @A3M0N just dosed his tank for BBA and it worked really well so far.
I've used peroxide religiously in the past with only modest result; that was when i got the panda gara who solved the issue.
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On 1/2/2024 at 2:57 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
As an example of bba before it goes a bit crazy and it forms like a diatom I have two older photos. The first is just this discoloration on the pleco cave and the second is discoloration (grey-black) on the red lava rock. You can see one rock looks fine, the other has shaded out over time as the algae takes hold.
You know I think you were right and the stuff on the substrate is bba.
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Hard to answer this since it is unknown the size of your sevs and geo (which species of geo?); however the general rules is these fishes will eat anything that will fit in their mouth; so i'd wait till it is quite a bit larger than their mouth. If your sevs are like my festy they have huge mouths. lemon bn will initially grow slow so it might take 6 months till he is large enough. btw i have a hand full of lemon bn i'd love to give away.
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Yea floor drain rocks. Have them in my basement room.
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On 1/2/2024 at 2:57 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
As an example of bba before it goes a bit crazy and it forms like a diatom I have two older photos. The first is just this discoloration on the pleco cave and the second is discoloration (grey-black) on the red lava rock. You can see one rock looks fine, the other has shaded out over time as the algae takes hold.
That was taken down and set in tubs, then in the new tank it went nuts and thrived on me. I had a mix of staghorn / BBA develop.
Some of your photos show the cyano, which you are aware and looking at, the other stuff you're showing reminds me of the above. I was looking at the tank this morning and I have a dead corner in the front left just because the intake is pretty weak. I am planning to swap it out, but it looks like circulation is playing a role in my particular case.
Do you happen to have SAE in any tanks you can move to this one for a month or two?The above is what looks like BBA to me.
This is what looks like cyano pretty clearly.
I dig the plan! keep us posted.
I do not have any sae; they were on my stocking list but didn't happen. panda gara is another fish that can eat bba but this tank isn't suitable for them - i mean it technically is in terms of water condition but they would be impossible to fish out afterwards. For that matter so would sae. I'm really not sure what to do here as something is lacking - here are updated pictures - also i measured the par this morning it was 15 so i incresae it to 50 but that might be too high - i'm thinking 30 might be better:
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On 1/3/2024 at 6:44 PM, jwcarlson said:
Wish me luck! This is the 125 I re-resealed 10 days ago. I actually do not think I had a leak after the first reseal. There's some discoloration from the spray paint on the bottom. Oh well, it's better sealed this time, I think.
I wish you luck !
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s. repens seems to grow well under the right condition:
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On 1/1/2024 at 4:49 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
Expanding on your conversation @anewbie I have a similar issue and experience.
The two things I would recommend is a month of seriously good siphoning to remove a lot of the debris in the sand. It could be compaction, causing stagnation on that part of the tank. Getting in there with a chopstick or a net handle might dislodge a lot of debris, but doing that stuff once a month might help long term to alleviate the issues. If you don't have a lasagna setup on the substrate I would mess with it as much as you can after you get the siphon side of things situated.
The plan in my setup is to remove the heavy / compacted top layer and replace it with something slightly more course as the base layer (the base then becomes the top, it'll be a fun hassle!
I'm sure in the end it'll all mix up, but I'm guessing that debris and organics sitting in the sand might be causing some dead pockets on you. Mine, I think is just due to the composition of that particular substrate and being heavy in iron/metals and encouraging BBA in spots.I've been doing some searching and my current thought is too much green in the light spectrum so my next experiment is for the next 30 days to turn off the green channel in my light; tank doesn't look as nice but we will see if that helps.
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On 1/2/2024 at 10:25 AM, Guppysnail said:
I searched many online places and found they all were selling c that were not actually c. I totally lucked out that my Lfs had 1 true c and their supplier had 2 more available that were tank raised.
The c are much more aggressive and reclusive and down right male bully to his girl as well as just less personality than the d. I prefer the d hands down. They are so animated, friendly and their constant flirting and never bickering makes them such a joy.
The d also just live to show off their fins. The c never changed color much but my d when going through mating rituals will change color and pattern 3-4 times in 15 minutes. They are awesome so consider it a very lucky mislabel
Yea i guess i will agree (well not on c since no first hand experience); i was rather surprise by the sudden colour change (photo above) which I presume is two males discussing a female. Of course now they have all reverted to their bland colouring. The a are generally speaking more colourful - never as rich as d at their best but more so during every day behavior. They are also as i noted more aggressive eaters and less polite - not mean but eat with a gusto. t are a totally different fish and a larger fish - it is a good thing they are stockier because they are in the aquarium with the festy who have similar behavior esp at eating time. So far i've not seen much colour changing and their pattern/colour are totally different - only way i know they are in the same genus is someone labelled them as such. One of them is downright pretty but it is also the smallest so not sure if it is a male or female - it has a gold line around the body pattern - i should try to get a picture but they don't sit still and the 10x4 has pretty thick glass making photo more difficult. When not eating they are fairly calm and so far with little bickering but they are not quite mature (I have 6 of them - wc) one sunday (which is when i do water changes) I'll remember to take my phone upstairs and get some photo of the a - i'm really happy with them. They are with the keyholes and so far they get along pretty well. I suspect the a were tank raised as the wc ones i had a few years ago were more stand-offish.
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Do mangrove grow like swamp trees - what i mean is the root structure massive in the bottom of the tank and will they eventually get too thick for a small aquarium (i mean the trunk) ?
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The problem is for a given grain size not all substrates are the same; for some reason moonlight is my bane causing major head-aches if it is more than an 1/2 an inch deep; estes stoney river which is somewhere between crystal river and moonlight hasn't had any issues up to 2 inches deep - and i don't fully understand why - as to cleaning stuff will sink into moonlight but on the estes stoney river (black substrate) stuff stays on the surface and can be easily siphon off the top. I havent' had pool filter sand long enough to comment on it - it is also between crystal river and moonlight but i think it is suppose to be denser and have similar properties as the estes stuff. Folks in the dwarf cichild forum recommend play sand but no first hand experience there.
As to your question when i had moon light i would lightly siphon into it (i use sponge filters exclusively so getting into pumps wasn't an issue); but mixed with soil i'm not sure i would do other than scoop the whole mess out and start over.
I've used moonlight, crystal river and torpedo beach; the later two seem ok but most of the fishes i keep really prefer a very fine substrate and moonlight is not suitable for planted tanks given that it develops aeneroaboic pockets too easily.
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On 1/1/2024 at 11:58 AM, Guppysnail said:
When I saw your photo they looked to me like dorsigera. My curviceps look nothing like those.
Here is my curviceps.
The sheepshead shaped face is the easiest way I found to id curvies vs the more rounded of dorsigera and the body is sleeker vs the barrel of does.
As well as the top back of the dorsal is white stripe vs the magenta on the dorsigera.
My cichlid guru friend talked to the people he knows who are the main farmer/wholesalers of them in the US. Where the place I bought the dorsigera labeled curviceps from got them. They are known to have been selling dorsigera as curviceps for about 2 decades.
Well getting cuvies right now will be difficult; i have t in one aquarium; a in another aquarium and i guess d in a third. To get c i'll have to setup another aquarium since i can't put them with the cupido or with t/a/d since they will cross breed. Darn wholesalers - actually i'm not sure i'm unhappy with the d's they are colouring up nicely and so far they have been quite polite without being pigs (the t and a are royal pigs; the a has bitten my fingers a few times when i feed them).
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On 1/1/2024 at 4:49 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
Expanding on your conversation @anewbie I have a similar issue and experience.
The two things I would recommend is a month of seriously good siphoning to remove a lot of the debris in the sand. It could be compaction, causing stagnation on that part of the tank. Getting in there with a chopstick or a net handle might dislodge a lot of debris, but doing that stuff once a month might help long term to alleviate the issues. If you don't have a lasagna setup on the substrate I would mess with it as much as you can after you get the siphon side of things situated.
The plan in my setup is to remove the heavy / compacted top layer and replace it with something slightly more course as the base layer (the base then becomes the top, it'll be a fun hassle!
I'm sure in the end it'll all mix up, but I'm guessing that debris and organics sitting in the sand might be causing some dead pockets on you. Mine, I think is just due to the composition of that particular substrate and being heavy in iron/metals and encouraging BBA in spots.My stuff isn't brown (diatom?) or bba; definitely deep green. Also the tank is fairly new (3 1/2 months) with extremely light stocking. I did get the python into the open areas where there were no plants and other than fine dust from the substrate itself there wasn't much. I know what you are talking about because i've had simlar issue on several year old eco complete substrate in an aquarium with medium to heavy stocking. This is definitely something else but i'm not sure what - yet.
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On 12/30/2023 at 5:58 PM, Guppysnail said:
There is just something about the Laetacara personality that I really love. Thanks for the photos 😍
Fyi: Someone more knowledgeable than myself has indicated that while wetspot sold these as Cuvies they are actually dorsies.
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This photo is for @Guppysnail:
My l. cuvies finally showed a little colour as they face off to determine something or other 😉
(I have 4 total with the other two in the foreground):
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On 12/29/2023 at 3:01 PM, Monkeypoint said:
Your gh is very low because of the RO. Is there a specific reason you're using RO, like your tap water is very hard?
180 - that's a lot of water! Cool. You could probably scale your water changes way back. I test fairly regularly for nitrates. As long as they're around 40ppm, I just top off. I'm only doing water changes like once a month now and mostly so I don't get a buildup of minerals but I also have wall to wall plants. In my shrimp tanks, I try to keep nitrates at around 20 ppm. Cory posted a great wc change video. I'll see if I can find it.
I know Amazons like a lot of light. I wonder if you could adjust the light by moving it so the swords get more of it. Honestly though, it doesn't look like you have a huge algae problem. And you could always get a pleco. I have a couple of Bristlenose plecos and they're always busy munching away at the algae.
I just told you the aquarium has wc c. hastatus and b. cupido; both prefer the soft water with the b. cupido pretty much requiring it. The nitrates are below 5 - probably around 2.
What causes algae on the substratre
in Plants, Algae, and Fertilizers
Posted
The filter is a sump with 'socks' and i clean the socks weekly though they are not clogged. It is a large aquarium 180 gallons. I could try chemi-clean but prefer to not use if this stuff will eventually go away.
Once i had a different type of bga caused by nitrogen release from anerobic activity but that was fixed by very soft current flowing over the substrate to lift the gas to escape but this is different. The stuff is a lot coarser almost sheet like.
The reason i favor chemi-clean over dr. tim (if i use something) is because i've used it before with success on a 29. At the time i had rams in the tank; the stuff died very fast the rams lived and i was happy and it never came back (I did add a lot of air stones); i'm very reluctant to use meds.
If it is cyano is there a negative to just letting it grow out of control - is the cyano bad for the aquarium (or fish health) ?