Meowtroid

Of all the fish stores I've been to, this one looks by far the cleanest and most organized, wow! I really wish we had something like this near me.

Thank you!! He's already received it and has sent me at least one thank you per day via text message haha. His girlfriend is also a big Aquarium Co-Op fan and has also been ecstatic about it. ❤️

I've recently started painting fish as a combination of my hobbies, and earlier this year my coworker asked me if I could paint his pufferfish (Congo Spotted Puffer and Pea Puffer). After a few months of working on it on and off, I got it done just in time to give it to him for Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Let me know what I ought to paint next. 🎨

Update! I have a coworker who keeps koi and goldfish and actually said he recognized the disease. He asked what temperature I keep the tank at (between 68 and 70 Farenheit) and I showed him the pictures and he pinned it as Aeromonus - a bacterial infection common in goldfish and koi that causes red ulcers and fluid accumulation. It explains the red ulcers, the dropsy-like behavior, and the swelling in my loach. His usual go to treatment he recommended was: A) put in a heater and gradually raise the tanks temperature for a week or two because the bacteria can't thrive in warmer waters B) three day course of Micro-Lift Broad Spectrum Treatment - a pond medication with the same active ingredients as Ich-X but in stronger concentrations and different percentages; Ich-X is <5% Formaldehyde, <2% Methanol, and <0.1% Malachite Green Chloride and dosed ~5ml/10gal Broad Spectrum Treatment is <22% Formaldehyde, and <0.2% Malachite Green Chloride and dosed 1ml/10gal The treatment I've been doing has been raising the tank's temperature by about two degrees each day until I hit about 80F where I'll keep the tank for about a week. I know these fish don't like temperatures that high, but for a short term I know from experience that they will tolerate it. The medication, I am dosing 1ml per 10gallons of water, with 30% water changes in between, for three days. So the med schedule looks like: Day 1: dose med Day 2: 30% water change, dose med Day 3: 30% water change, dose med Day 4: 30% water change I just finished dose #3 and here's the night and day improvement I have seen on my goldfish already: Before: After: The ulcers on his top fin and tail are all but gone, and the ulcers on his side are healing too. As you can see, he's a lot more active right now too, and won't sit still for a photo. His appetite has also shown improvement and he isn't floating tailside up anymore, and generally has returned to much more typical behavior. YAY! The swelling in Omi the loach hasn't gone down too much yet, but Omi's appetite has at least also improved, and I'm hoping to see more improvement going forward. I'll keep folks posted on the recovery process but hopefully this was the answer!

Nitrates usually sit around 0-20 depending on when the last water change was done. They're currently sitting around there I think from a) the water changes and filter clean up I did with the fungus issues and b) cause I have pothos growing out of the top. I have also been feeding lightly in general, didn't feed them at all during the med trio, and haven't been fertilizing the tank because of all of the issues with fungus. The tank has been running for a little over a year now.

Hello all, I really wish I could have cleared this up on my own but at this point it's getting worse, not better, and I'm getting pretty worried. Right off the bat, water parameters: 0ppm Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate pH about 7.4 GH about 200ppm KH about 120 Temp at about 69-70 Farenheit depending on the time of day My Shubunkin goldfish, Pebbles, has had some regular issues with developing ulcers that usually have gone away on their own and recently I hadn't had much problems with them. However over the past two weeks they've developed worse than I have ever seen them, and his top fin is started to look really quite bad, plus it has spread to his tail. If on the off chance someone knows just by looking what I can do about this, I'm going to post the initial photo here before getting into details: Before the ulcers developed I also noticed this behavior that concerned me that seemed like swim bladder problems where Pebbles would be nose to the bottom, tail to the top, which hasn't improved, even after feeding shelled peas: Pebbles is in a 75 gallon acrylic aquarium with only two other inhabitants: two golden dojo loaches named Omi and Bambam. The tank had something like a fungus outbreak two weeks ago that I had cleared up with a water change and thorough gravel vacuuming. Then it came back a week after that (so one week ago) with a vengeance so I did an even more thorough gravel vacuuming, scrubbed all the hard scape, cleaned the sponge filter and the canister filter which had gotten really gunky with a slime, and started the whole tank on the med trio. The fungus is now 100% gone and even the remnants I hadn't gotten with scrubbing are gone now after the med trio, but that's when Pebbles developed these lesions. To make matters weirder, Omi, the larger of the dojo loaches whom I think may be a female, has developed this bloating around the anus that I cannot tell if it's constipation or if Omi is egg bound or what is happening here, but shelled peas and meds didn't help with it either. The smaller loach, Bambam, seems perfectly fine. As I said I did the full med trio and today is day 7 where I did a 30% water change and I am not seeing any improvement. I have some minimal amount of plants in here I struggled to get to grow because the fish like to tear them up, but at this point I am considering just taking out the sad looking anubias's, doing a salt treatment, and letting the crypts die cause I'm a bit desperate. Any tips on my next steps?

Hey Marita, it was so great to meet you!! I've had such a blast literally every time I've gone to the club and every time I feel like I meet new great folks there. I'll shoot you an email sometime about getting some rice fish from you sometime soon! That fry tray is awesome by the way, I can't wait to actually set it up sometime and make Dean proud by raising up my first batch of fry in it.

It is!

I thought I had recognized him but I couldn't for the life of me tell where - until he mentioned going to Peru and then I realized! Thanks for what you've done for the hobby, Cory, I feel like it's had a real tangible impact in my area - the old folks are seeing a lot of new people for the first time in a long while and it's been a really good feeling to connect with people in my lifetime home community over our shared interests

Thought I'd share a fun story about my local aquarium club! I'm a relatively new member of my club, I have now been to four meetings and want to go even more often, but it is always a matter of my work schedule conflicting. I was lucky enough to attend yesterday though, where I got to see Dean who flew in all the way from Seattle to do a workshop! It was great seeing Dean but I think my favorite part was getting dinner afterwards - and discovering that Michael, who runs Project Amazonas with MT Amazon Expeditions to Peru, is a long time member of my club and a local to me! And our club President has gone on trips to Peru catching fish with Michael as well - her cupidos are wild caught from the Amazon. There were so many amazing stories about their trips down there. I think my favorite was about how they visited a village where a young teen girl had been born with underdeveloped limbs and their medical team had been able to bring her prosthetics - something they didn't even think was an option for her. That and the story about how Michael ended up with the Peruvian flag painted on one toenail. I would really like to go myself sometime in the near future when I can afford to go. It was a treat talking to other new club members as well and realizing that three of the four of us at the table discovered our club thanks to Aquarium Co-Op's Local Aquarium Clubs map! To anyone who wants to try finding a club near them I highly recommend it - my club has been a blast every time I've gone and I learn so much. The in person experience of meeting locals who share in your hobby just can't be replicated online. Here's a link to the map: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/apps/store-locator And to anyone I met who may be lurking in these forums and is in my club, hello, I'm Kato! It was nice to meet you and I can't wait to see you again!

Actually @Fish Folk you reminded me with your inverted planted pots, Tanner Serpa did something just like that for his indoor guppy pond which also has no filter. I considered doing something like this at one point but with apartment living I don't have any space really for using power tools like diamond tipped drills, unfortunately.

That handbook looks amazing!! I'll have to order it! I'm always looking for more literature in the hobby - gotta clear my bookshelves of stuff I don't need/read so I can make room for good stuff like this.

Oh that doesn't seem like a bad idea! I didn't bother if only because Dean didn't bother with his, and I'm willing to copy just about anything Dean does if it's worked for him hahaha

Wish I could help! My balcony has two outlets for exterior power. An extension cord would likely be your best bet, but I'm not sure how you'd run it outside without having an open door or window.

Yes, it is the MacCourt 20gallon preformed pond liner! I got mine at Lowe's, they're about $25 so not bad at all. As for the barrel, I did a search for whiskey barrels in the same dimensions and Home Depot had some available so I went about five miles down the road to look. The /only/ thing that I was able to test fit perfectly was a repurposed genuine Jack Daniel's whiskey barrel planter. It looks amazing but I should warn you - it was very heavy and carrying it to a third floor apartment was hell, and because it was repurposed from actual materials used to make whiskey, the barrel rings are rusty and don't hold as tight. For decoration purposes, though, it is perfect. The one I got from Home Depot was about $40, but honestly I should have asked them to knock the price down a bit since it was in kinda poor shape. If I'd been a little more patient, I probably could've found a cheaper one on Craigslist as Dean suggested in his video 🤣 A warning on feeder goldfish - if they're comets, they get to be pretty massive! I have a Shubunkin I adopted that needed a bigger home and right now I've got her in a 75gallon tank and even that isn't big enough for her. If I can ever swing it, I want to upgrade her to a 300gallon. Comets get about the same size! Here's the mini pond as of this past Sunday. There's a large Aquarium Co-Op sponge filter in here with black airline tubing. In this picture I had it running with the only spare air pump I had on hand which was a Tetra air pump that was way too heavy duty, I've since replaced it with another nano usb air pump - the tupperware container is to protect it from the elements and will be hidden by some potted plants. There's a very thin amount of gravel inside just for beneficial bacteria and to make it look a little less plain, there's a piece of drift wood with some extra anubias nana petite and a sprig of a mini bolbitis I had laying around, with a little bit of extra Subwassertang just chucked in at the bottom. The salvinia minima on top is from my chili rasbora tank, while I purchased the water hyacinth, broad leaf watersprite, and some frog bit from a local fish store. There's also some anacharis in there I got from the local fish store for good measure. It's dosed very heavily with Easy Green right now, nitrites and nitrates off the charts. I'm trying to get algae to grow but the one downside to my little balcony is that it's north-facing means it gets very little sunlight!! Here's hoping by around July it'll be growing like crazy and ready for fish. Maybe by then I'll even manage to actually /find/ some rice fish, hah!