xXInkedPhoenixX

@StockEwe49 I was JUST looking at that online, thank you. It looks like a neat plant. Guppy grass just sits above ths substrate? No planting needed? I'm just bummed my Subbwassertang doesn't seem to like me right now, it's so cool.

ugh @Patrick_G unfortunately for some reason I suck at Java Moss. Rotala looks like my Ludwigia Red Needle leaf (same plant different name???) which grows very well in my parent tank maybe I will propagate that. update: hmm possibly a google miss. Rotala looks different..but maybe my red needle would work.

@lefty oI'll have to check the rag company out thanks!

Hi @rnn, I'm very sorry for your losses, how traumatic and disheartening. I agree with @laritheloud it IS a personal subject. Everyone on here might give you different answers. You did nothing wrong you were trying to do what was best for them. Sadly we all go through something like this at some point in our fish keeping experiences. Personally, I don't medicate in QT unless I see signs of illness and generally QT a minimum of 4 weeks, 5 on wild caught fish. You can still follow the med trio in future but I agree with @laritheloud waiting at least a day or two, observing THEN doing it- but you can also go with the "weak fish" recommendations with the med trio and do 1 medication per week for 3 weeks. I'm not sure the LFS recommendation for Aquarium Salt and Corys is the best as I've always seen scaleless fish such as corys are more sensitive unless you cut the dose but if you do that not sure if it's helpful anyway. Others who keep corys might have an opinion. I have Otos and have treated the tanks they're in with salt but haven't had any issues.

Am I seeing it right do you have the plant in the substrate? Maybe that's why. Should be attached to wood or rocks but not buried as generally it does a lot better as it's a rhizone plant. I don't use ferts and mine do great- tho I see you don't have any nitrate... If since moving the plant you are seeing growth it very well may come back but I find Windelov grows fairly slowly just be patient with it. If it is buried, unbury it and glue it somewhere and that might help. Here is a helpful Aquarium co-op video:

@lefty o that's true, I have a couple of towels from Adam's brand detailer that are synthetic and super plush. There is good stuff and there is bad stuff.

Hahah @lefty o nice, me too I love detailing my cars- but I was also a fabric science student....as YOU know but others do not, microfiber is made of petroleum product aka polyester more often than not, high heat would melt it and scratch surfaces if used. Natural fibers like cotton (my prefered car detail fabric) would burn rather than melt and is often more absorbent and get softer over time(though not being absorbent in car detailing can be handy so I do use microfiber too). It's also prone to static, which drives me nuts. I use wool dryer balls to help with that.

So, my 4.12 gal Aquatop cube with 9 CPDs is apparently not a suitable home for my now very unhappy Subwassertang. It was a lovely medium green and fluffy now it's gone dark and flat....which is funny since it was that lovely green and fat in a 3 gallon with the same light! I think I'll have to replace it. I love me an easy plant. What would be good for cover if I got CPD babies. I'm not really looking to breed but ok with the whol Darwin's game in that tank. It will be a back corner behind a piece of chola which has a small Anubias and Narrow Leaf attached to it.

What you're using is probably ok, but ever since I kept pet rats and used towels for their bedding I switched to hypo allergenic, non scented detergent. That was years ago now I use Meyers which is milder than detergents like Gain as far as perfumes go. You could always keep a separate detergent if you thought it would effect them. If you're just using it on your arms/floors/outside the tanks you likely won't have an issue unless you have a lot of detergent residue. and I agree with @lefty o, skip the softner. You'd do best to do that for yourself and your clothes anyway.

PLANTS: Nitrate experiment: The Accidental Oto tank October 23rd So 3 of my tanks have been very consistently testing at 40ppm Nitrate for 2 months, maybe even bordering on 80 (those of us who use the API test kits know that the reds are very hard to tell apart). It hasn't done anything detrimental to my fish population that I can see- and despite my water changing and multitude of plants (even adding at times)- it doesn't seem to make a difference. At some point I'll need to test source water for a baseline- though what I do is use 1 gallon water bottles- fill them with super hot water from the tap- treat with Fritz and leave them out overnight uncapped and either using them the next day or cap them and put them away until I need them. Attempting to find solutions I've always heard of the magical Nitrate sucking properties of Pothos. I happen to be pretty good with plants outside of aquariums and have Pothos given to me over a decade ago. I also have a Spider plant that well, it could star in a horror film because it is a MONSTER. It's babies have babies that have babies and etc: Having propogated the spider plant several times for others and knowing Pothos is just as easy (and I'd just repotted mine and had a piece of it chilling in a jar of water)- I thought well I'll try soaking up Nitrates with a Pothos and Spider. I have a thing about DIY stuff. I don't always like them, for me, they disrupt the overall look of my tanks so I avoid doing them if I can. What I do like to do is visit my favorite "handmade" website and see if anyone has solutions. In this case I found a 3D printed solution. I attached a Tetra-O clip on light I had handy for extra light for the tiny baby plants for now. They're not going to be giant nitrate suckers yet- but even since the 23rd I can see the roots and leaves growing well.

I LOVE koi fish. I hope at some point in my life I will be able to keep them in some form or fashion.

I've only had 1 HOB and it hasn't given me any issues- and I'm pretty happy with it, it's an Aqueon QuietFlow 10 - what I've been told is great about these instead of some competitors is that when they lose power they don't have to be primed- which means no burned out HOB after a power outage if you're not home to save it.

OTOCINCLUS VITATTUS: The Accidental Oto Tank: It is now 12 days since finding new baby Otos. They have been daily fed crushed Hikari Wafers (this is how I raised all of the first ones) and a tiny bit of Repashy. I clean the breeder out every day with lab droppers and put in new food. I check on bodily functions and make sure I see poop. They are currently in the smallest of my floating breeder boxes. They have gained their color and markings and are just tiny versions of their parents. Recent water parameters: Temp 78.9 (no heater) pH 7.2 Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 40 (consistently for 2 months) KH: 3/53.7 GH: 161.1

OTOCINCLUS VITATTUS: The Accidental Oto Tank. This is the home where my Vittatus offspring from the Parent Tank live. They are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd spawns of Otos I've raised from that tank. There are approximately 35 (once in the neighborhood of 60) of them though I will never be able to really count them unless I want to go through a whole LOT of trouble to do so. I kept track of deaths (which weren't that many and most during the earliest days) and give aways- some have also moved into my other tanks. Though my original plan was to sell them to the LFS once big enough I really love my little Otos and the tank itself has started to grow on me. It's double filtered with a sponge and an Aqueon 10 HOB with an ACO prefilter sponge. I don't run a heater with it. We have some Amazon Sword, Narrow Leaf Fern, Anubias Nana, there's a banana plant in there somewhere that I'm not sure is even alive as it grows amongst a Windelov Java. All of my Otos have been "trained" to eat from food bowls. This helps me determine what/how much they are eating and keeps cleaning a little easier though they always manage to throw food outside the bowls. (The Accidental Otos eat from the orangey bowl you see pictured). I turkey baste the bare floor of food every day and take out old foods. They get Hikari Algae Wafer (which is what they were ALL raised on), now Repashy Super Green, and a slice of English Cucumber on a veggie clip sans skin. They love to hide and don't come out much during the day. So they were recently given two custom sanded coconut hides with 2 drilled/round exit/entry doors to the front and bottom side of the coconut they are attached to the walls of the tank with giant suction cups. They have a "rock" hide as well. They took to the coconuts quickly. Most will hide inside these, under another plant on wood towards the back of the tank and near the prefilter sponge as it is pretty close to the back left corner of the tank. On the days where I'm able to relax in the early morning with coffee before tank lights come on it's a beautiful sight to see all these Otos out and about shoaling with each other. On one of those nice mornings recently I noticed some pairs clearly "dancing" and some of the larger Otos (which I believe are the girls) stuck to the undersides of the Amazon Swords. This is where my Momma Oto in my Parent Tank liked to lay her eggs so I thought maybe I'd have some coming soon. The tiny babies are near translucent so they can be hard to spot in some tanks/circs. I'm nearly a veteran of this now so I started to watch the glass along the waterline (which is where I find most of them) then work my eyes down along all the sides. Once I spot them I typically use a shrimp net- very delicately- and start with the long side pressed down on the glass below the baby, sloooooowwwly creep up on them (they're actually not skittish but the trick is to get them to stop sucking glass and get in the net without harming them- they are SO fragile). I coax them gently to the top of the wateline and generally this is when they give up the ghost and try and swim away which is hopefully into the net! I then take the bottom half of a travel pill case and scoop them out of the net then into a floating breeder box. This is where I can monitor/feed and ensure their safety. No predators to worry about in the Accidental Oto Tank but there is always danger of being sucked up or ? Anyhow. After a few days of watching waterlines on the 24th of October I spotted the first of my Offspring's Ofspring. I caught 3 on the first day and 3 on the days following. This is my pill case on the first day with the 3 babies inside for size reference: I lost one of my babies on the 30th of October. This doesn't seem uncommon, though a bummer. Recent Water Parameters: Temp 78.9 (no heater) pH 7.6 Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 40 (consistent)

Welcome to the forum! Bumps are bound to happen, those and the joys of keeping can be shared here!

@Maggie @Guppysnail Thanks to you both. It's hard to see if there's any squabbling as they tend to like to use the sheltered areas I gave them most. What I do see is alot of chasing, sometimes the males circling each other- but no nipping. There's some Subwassertang in there, it was really happy when I put it in there but now it's turned a dark green and has flattened out some I'm wondering if it's not happy in there- was going to be the shelter for tiny eggs and fish if that happened- and I was going to let nature take its course on the rest since they're not parental. I'm sorry maggie, about your betta. It's hard isn't it. I started noticing more and more posts here about sick, dying and dead betta fish and they all seemed too young. There are very good fish keepers here so it can't all be them. I'm pretty good at balancing a tank and keeping my fish healthy- just seems for me Bettas require far to finicky parameters for a good chunk of us to be able to maintain. I respect those who have an easier time caring for them, but I'm beginning to think the lot for the rest of us is to lose them far too early.

Really sorry you're going through this. It's not totally comforting but we all go through some level of the "morning check" dread as fish keepers at some point. Just keep going, they depend on you. 🙂

I'm not sure I can keep up with a journal but I think I will try. It all started with my accidental Otocinclus Vittatus spawn. I had actually picked Otocinclus because I wanted a tank that "wouldn't breed". As they say, nature finds a way and/or nature has other plans. I was in love with the little sucker mouthed catfish before, but it has only made me love them more. It all started here for me with that spawn: Accidental Breeding of Otocinclus! So I decided to keep my offspring. They are now in a 10 gallon that was intended to be a grow out tank. Other than some daily food clean up (due to barebottom tank) this tank is very stable. RECENTLY at the LFS while picking up fish to fill out my other tanks the gal mentions that they had Tiger Otos. They were conveniently at the front desk. I saw them, they're HUGE (as compared to my little Vittatus) and was totally enamoured by them. I left as I never impulse buy a fish. They kept creeping into mind. I started to formulate options/plans. This forum didn't help me resist either! Tiger Otocinclus (Oto) anyone?? I went to the big box, got me a holding tank, drove to the LFS and intended to buy every ($20) Tiger Oto they had. Which is six. LFS store guy said they were at the store for 2 weeks. We are 24 days into non-medicated Quarantine at my house and everyone is doing very very well. I haven't got any recent pictures because the piece of wood I put in the 2gallon QT for them makes the water far too foggy for me to get good ones- but I count all 6 of them every day. My ultimate intention is to see if I can get the Tiger Otos to breed too. So, while we are coming close to the end of QT for the Tiger Otos, my journaling adventure begins...or ends. We'll see.

Oh my, what a cluster of problems all kind of different. I might at this point follow the Co-op's med trio treatment steps at this point to cover my bases if I were in your shoes. What a tough spot you're in! The treatment for med trio says for weak fish space out treatment. Ich-x was 2nd on that list so I guess you'd do the Maracyn (which is first on the list) for a week then ParaCleanse. Maybe @Colu will pipe in and verify my guess.

GOOD LUCK 🤞

Agreed. I can't imagine catching them. My Otos are hard too. Recently having aquired a Hillstream I can see where they are going to be a PIA to catch.

Do you have a floating breeder? What about sinking it and putting food inside, when enough are in there put the lid on it and pull them up? I mean time consuming but less invasive, a chance you have that on hand.

don't do drugs kids. do guppies.

....if we're being specific...meth/speed. equivalent. ...but the opposite, in a good way. hahaha

I knew @Mmiller2001 would know. Hehehe