laritheloud

Ramshorns!!! They'd survive the apocalypse along with MTS 😂 I can't lie, though, I love my ramshorns.

Agree, follow Colu's advice. Keep Nitrites as close to 1 ppm or lower and maintain daily water changes until they go down to 0. You can treat with Ich X according to the instructions on the bottle (dose daily + daily 30% water changes prior to each new dose). There's an article on aquarium co-op that offers a great guide for treating ich, but I think your primary focus should be on improving water quality in your aquarium. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/how-to-treat-ich-on-freshwater-fish

It looks slightly above zero from this angle, so you do seem to have some nitrates, though they are low! The ammonia test always bothers me. It never seems to match the yellow on the card 100% even when it is zero, lol.

The photo of the latter fish is a dog faced puffer fish. I don't know the first one, I'm not well-versed in saltwater fish.

The trio is Ich X, Paracleanse, and Maracyn.

Omg.... It says on their manual to add in a washer. I feel so dumb! I'll exchange the cylinder tomorrow and pick up more o-rings.

Question from an utter noob: The directions for the CO2 art regulators say to put in a washer then connect to the cylinder. I did not see a washer in my box, but I saw an extra o-ring. I erroneously assumed the extra o-ring was supposed to be a washer and ended up with double o-rings and LIKELY this caused the failing/leak and dumped my cylinder into the room. I'm a dummy in other words. BUT. If the instructions say to add in a washer and I didn't get one, am I supposed to pick up a washer? I'm all kinds of confused.

Update: Removed the cylinder and found a shredded o-ring. Nooooooot sure how this happened. Should I buy replacements from them or elsewhere, lol? 🤪

Solenoid is on and the tank is suddenly reading empty. Didn’t gas into the water, fish and drop checker are fine and there was no power to it all night. The canister was reading at 800 psi yesterday. is the regulator faulty or is the can actually empty?? EDIT to add: this has been running for about a month with no issues thus far, and I had checked for leaks prior to full installation. I'm confused.

Get what makes you happy. Bottom dwellers are not a requirement, and I don't think having corydoras does much (if anything) for clean up.

I still think the CO2 injection might have something to do with this, because again, not a trace of flashing when the CO2 is shut off. It's very strange. It's possible the CO2 bubbles is aggravating some sort of prior irritation, but who knows. I did throw in a dose of PraziPro just in case, and I'll follow through with a water change and a second round to cover my bases. Gouramis will stay in quarantine an extra 3 weeks to ensure that stress is low and all possibilities of parasites are gone before I introduce them. Funny enough, the 29 gallon tank gives me way more stress than my 10 gallon quarantine (I am anxiety-prone and working on it, but I do spend too much time scrutinizing my fish for signs of disease -- I no longer panic, though, and force myself to wait an extra day or two before taking any med action). My gourami are so soothing to interact with and they're incredibly friendly and mild. Parameters have always been sparkling, too, even through their treatments.

I have a 29 gallon heavily planted tank that hangs around 20 to 30 nitrates (with fertilizer). And then I have my 10 gallon tank... with primarily floating plants. My nitrates hang near zero all the time in spite of fertilization. Some plants are extremely efficient at sucking up nitrogenous wastes, so if you have a lot of fast-growing floaters and stem plants, that could account for low nitrates. Also, retest after you shake the heck out of Nitrate Tester #2. The instructions say to shake vigorously for 30 seconds, I just hammer away at it for up to a minute, add to the vial, then shake for as long as I can manage until my arm feels tired. It's easy to get a false 0 reading if you don't shake it enough.

Awesome, thank you. I have a 10 gallon tank I'm going to use for breeding Mystery Snails, I'll probably try to pick up one or two more, then drop the water level and see how they do. I know they produce a LOT of waste, and I'm prepared to do water changes! My floating water lettuce sucks up a lot of those nutrients, though, thank goodness.

Thank you, I'll continue to tinker slowly and keep a close eye on them.

I don't actually own a TDS meter, but I know that my water is fairly hard (around 10 dGH) and alkaline (aquifer water). I fertilized pretty aggressively in the past two weeks and measured my nitrates as fairly high even after a weekly 50% water change. I keep tank-bred diamond tetras which were bought from my LFS -- and the LFS, when I tested the bag water, actually had harder water than my own. The tetras have bred and continue to attempt to spawn sporadically with no special care. I also keep corydoras elegans in this water, and haven't seen any persistent flashing issues with them -- only with the young 1 inch or so tetra, which are maybe 40 to 50 days old now? I only have a best estimate and not an exact age! I also have 6 amano shrimp that hide most of the time under a specific clump of java moss, except when they want to steal a catfish tablet. 3 mystery snails and 2 nerites are also in the tank. I just tested the water right now and it's ammonia 0, nitrite 0, Ph 7.4 or 7.6 (somewhere between them, down from the normal Ph 8.2) and nitrates around 20 to 25 ppm. If they are gill flukes, I'm surprised I haven't been seeing any other worrying symptoms. The fish are intensely colored, active, spawning, and feeding vigorously.

Interesting, thanks for your input. I'll keep watching, and I might try a round of PraziPro if I see more fish flashing. Could high TDS cause the flashing? I might have overdone the root tabs.

Yep, sure do! I run it for 6.5 hours, 1.5 hours before lights on max, 1 hour before lights off.

How many mystery snails do you have, and how long did it take them to start laying egg clutches? I would love to breed mine. I have three snails, all different colors, but I have approximately 0 signs of mating or egg laying, and I'm starting to wonder if I just have all females....

I love african dwarf frogs! Look at how cute they are!

As a general note: I have previously treated the display tank with Ich X and General Cure a few months ago, before I knew I had fry in the tank. They might have been wrigglers throughout treatment. EDIT: I did some google searching and it looks like excess CO2 injection could cause flashing. I'm going to turn down the injection a bit and see if there's improvement, as I recently did try to increase injection and that was the only change to the tank.

Spotted a young tetra flashing against plants again after the CO2 turned on. There are visible particles in the water that I can't seem to clear completely. None of my other fish are flashing, and there are no ich spots, no fin clamping, appetite is good and they ate voraciously. Could the particulates and the CO2 injection be itching them? I can't decide if it's wise to throw in some PraziPro and/or Ich X or to just let it be. Thoughts, @Fish Folk?

I absolutely love my snails! In the display we have two nerites (a tiger named Riley and a zebra that my son hasn't named yet) and three mystery snails. My son named them all! We have a gold mystery named Nick (or Nikki), a purple mystery named Aaron (or Erin), and a blue mystery named Skylar. We've never had eggs or mating activity in the month+ we've had all three together, so I have zero idea what their sexes are. We have tons of bladder snails, too. In the quarantine tank we have bladder snails and ramshorns! I adore them all.

Good luck! It's so adorable to watch them go after brine shrimp. It's my gouramis' favorite.

Shave off enough for one feeding from a cube, then store the leftovers in the freezer without defrosting.

I agree with @HH Morant. Those gills look inflamed, and it might be a bacterial infection. Try a full course of antibiotics. I'm not sure which one would be best for this illness.