anewbie

How many cory? and single male apisto are still territorial and i would expect him to poke at the cory from time to time. Anyway if your rummy are adults without the cory and apisto the tank is already a bit over populated though probably manageable.

To be honest; i usually find it happens when the water quality is poor. what size is your aquarium and exact population? rummy are normally in large aquarium (48 inches or longer) and large schools - at least 8; same for cory - apisto pairs or trio never do well with cory (lots of stress). Why is this important - stressful fishes get sick. Been through this multiple times this year - large water changes 2 or 3 times a week; thin the population; a bit of rid ick or simliar (kordon, or Hikari) for 2 or 3 days (both recommend 30% or larger water changes between usage. Salt can also be used with great success and in many ways i prefer salt but it will do short and long term damage to most plants so i've stopped using salt as a treatment in a planted aquarium. To be honest i can never tell if the med or large water changes are curing the issue - the thing is that healthy fish develop a slim layer (why you should never touch them) that help protect them from these icky things.

In all honesty as the aquarium age it will vanish; though having a nerite snail is ok but if you get a female it will leave little white dots everywhere. diatom usually occur due to silica in new substrate and as it is consumed the diatom will die out.

Cryptocoryne Pontederiifolia Red Lips grown emersed:

Most species of apistogramma are not pair bonding. The male has a region he claims and will breed with any female who enters his domain; however if a female is in his domain and does not wish to breed he will chase her away. This is why they can't be kept in a small aquarium and need a lot of hiding places. Leaf littler makes excellent hiding places since they can hide under leaves. macmasteri are such a non-pair bonding species though they are not as aggressive as some other species. Your aquarium looks like a 29 is this the case? Most pair bonding species come from nijjensi complex with panduro and nijjensi being two members. However in this case the pairs are not always for life and they can break up also females can be very picky about which male she will breed with - trio of these species never work long term but this is unrelated to your issue.

Yea - i have a piece of wood (malyasian?) that refuses to sink after a month. I ended up putting it under a rock 😉 For today i'm in a whiny mood since i can't go anywhere (snowed in; more precisely i live at the top of a very steep road they don't salt nor plow).

My blackwater aquarium - ph around 5.3/ec 26: - Behind them i'm growing aquatic plants emerrsed:

bloodworm bad; flluval bug bites great.

Probably lack of nutrients; i always fed mine root tabs and strong light. Of course these days I cheat and grow it like this;

Yea those females can be nasty; you have to be careful because they sort of 'know' just where to hit another fish to kill it. People have tried breeding borelli in 15 and 20 high aquariums nad have reported the female one shot killing the male even though they are relatively passive species. Trifs are said to be quite aggressive esp m/f.

Apistogramma is a genus not a species and different species behave differently. Some are polygamous; some are pair forming; different species have different aggression level and domestic breeds have colouring issues; so some additional details would be helpful. I.e, adding a 2nd female to an aquarium with pair forming species isn't a great thing; she might survive and the male might be willing to breed with her but the other female will have a enhance level of aggression towards her. For polygamous species she will probably find a nice hiding place; some species are quite docile and there is not so much aggression. The issue with domestic bred species is the ability to signal by colour change is frequently lost; this is esp true of macs where female look nearly identical to male. You do have a picture but i'm not great at identifying females though she looks a little similar a species i have she is different. btw a few more leaves would be helpful as my bitaeniata frequently hide under leaves when chased.

I ended up treating with kanaplex (day 1) and rid ick (day 1 and day 3); day 4 (today) I did a 60% water change. As far as i can tell that solved the issue but am watching every day. The two remaining blue-keri perk up in 24 hours and i'll watch to see if their fins regrow. I did have two blue keri die and 1 ember. I kind of was hopeful that clean water would solve the issue which is why i waited so long to treat them (approx 3 weeks). Probably should have treated them sooner. Not happy about the that ember dying; the keri are very very old and i mostly just keep them because well i have that obligation. Hum. rid ick (blue methane + ??) seems to be very effective at curing epistylis.

I am currently waiting for the following books to have something to read: stone door The winds of winter The navigator children Light Bringer (i think i read this); and red god. -- It is hard to find good stuff to read; esp when some of these series take 20+ years.

Ok. So if it gets much worse i'll treat with chemclean. Probably the same active ingrediant as dr. tim. Yet another question; a 'sister aquarium' that was setup around the same time with the same substrate is not having any issues - one key difference is that aquarium has tap water (ec around 240 - gh 6); this aquarium i've been slowly softening with ro water per water change so it is much softer - with lower gh - around ec 120; gh 2ish). So basically the aquarium being impacted has less nutrients than the one htat is fine... it might be unrelated to what actually triggered the cyano but maybe it will ring a bell? (Also the fish density in the other aquarium is approx 2x this aquarium).

If not spreading to the body what do you recommend? My primary concern are the cory eques which show no body infection; i could care less about the 3 keri tetra so my hope is something mild that will protect the eques and ember tetra (which also show no sign of rot).

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) ?

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. -- @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.

So should i treat it with chemclean or just ignore it and it will eventually go away ?

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 ?

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 ?

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....

Could be dwarf sag; hard to tell without a better picture and perhaps the roots.

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.

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 😉

I've used peroxide religiously in the past with only modest result; that was when i got the panda gara who solved the issue.