Stephanie K

@Zac thanks for your input! I’ve had it by itself for about a week and it still looks the same. Hopefully it’s nothing. @Chick-In-Of-TheSea I don’t think it could be snails. The packaging on the Top Fin plants from PetSmart says “snail free.” They look more like root nodes on house plants? @lefty o thanks for the advice. I’ll rinse it a bit better again and keep an eye on it. 🤞🏼

Hi everyone! We bought a larger Anubias from PetSmart and admittedly had it sitting around for a couple of weeks before I had the chance to take it out of the container it comes in. We removed it from the gel and packaging (it’s currently submerged in water by itself) and I noticed these brown bumps around the bottom. There were a couple higher up on the stems but I cut the leaf off. Does anyone know if these are just root nodes? Thanks, all!

@Colu @nabokovfan87 thank you both again for your help. Heartbroken to say our little guy passed away this evening. We appreciate your support through this difficult time

@Colu will do, thank you again to you and @nabokovfan87 As of tonight he’s on his side a bit more, breathing pretty hard. He still ate but barely wanted to. Will keep trying.

@Colu got it, will continue the Maracyn feedings until the Metroplex arrives. If we do end up needing to feed medicated food for three weeks, is it ok to stick to frozen brine shrimp? We will also add another tablespoon of salt back in after our water change today.

@nabokovfan87 their usual food is NorthFin pellets (they would get frozen foods two days a week and I would fast them for one day) But since we’ve been medicating I’ve been using frozen brine shrimp. He’s been eating two small meals twice a day, but I do have to feed him with tweezers. @Colu I just ordered some Metroplex but unfortunately it won’t be here until Wednesday. Should I continue feeding the Maracyn food until then? We do have a few live plants in our tank. Do you think catching him for salt baths would put more stress on his body? We only have a few plants in our tank now so if you think it would be better to leave him where he is, we can take the plants out or just sacrifice them. We have another tank but I wouldn’t want to cross contaminate anything. We are also due for a water change today. Since we added one table spoon initially, did maybe a 25% water change a week later, and then added in two teaspoons; do you think it would be safe to add 2 tablespoons after the water change today? Is that amount of Salt still safe for our Nerite? Lastly, what do you both think about dosing the tank with medication vs. feeding medicated food? Is feeding generally more effective? My main concern would be if it would take more oxygen out of the water since he’s breathing hard, but maybe at this point that’s more from his infection than the amount of oxygen in the water.

@nabokovfan87 thanks so much for your quick reply. We added 1 tablespoon a couple of weeks ago. Did a partial water change, about 25%, then added 2 teaspoons back since then. The tank is 5 gallons.

@Colu @nabokovfan87 hi, again, an update on our betta: I noticed pineconing this evening when I went to feed his second dose of Maracyn food. I know this is Dropsy and a symptom of something serious internally. I’ve seen people talk about a lot of different methods but given his current treatment history, is there anything I can do to make him more comfortable?

@nabokovfan87 @Colu thank you both so much for your help! We now have a second air stone in there in addition to the one in our sponge filter. He’s still breathing a bit hard but he does seem a little better. We checked our parameters yesterday and all still seemed ok. We will finish up his week of medicated frozen food with Maracyn. Hoping to have a better update by next week. And since this is our first sick fish (obviously we are new to the hobby), we really appreciate you getting us on the right treatment paths!

@Colu @nabokovfan87 thank you! I do have some extra air stones so I will add another one in. @nabokovfan87 just curious, do you happen to know how long it can take for an air stone to begin improving the oxygen in the water?

@Colu thank you, he’s struggling today but we will increase the maracyn dose accordingly in his food tonight. We really appreciate your guidance with this.

@Colu Got it. We’ve added another teaspoon of salt to his tank and will continue feeding the medicated food. Is it ok to use a quarter packet even though we’re using less food?

@Colu thanks so much for your reply! We have Maracyn so we will start that treatment today. When I mix the medication with frozen food, I am using about 1 teaspoon of defrosted food total since we are making him new food every 24 hours and going through it pretty quick. I try to dose the medication accordingly (about 1/3 of the recommended amount since we are not using a full tablespoon of food). Do you think this can still be effective? Since we introduced 1 tablespoon of salt last week then did almost a 30% water change, we only dosed 1 teaspoon to replace the salt we removed. Do you think we should add another teaspoon?

Water Parameters: Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Nitrate: 10-15 ppm Kh: 80 ppm Ph: 7.2 Temp: 79-80 degrees 5 gallon One betta One nerite snail Live plants Hi everyone, First, thank you to those who has helped us with our little guy so far. We are grateful to be able to learn from you all here. Well, we are hoping someone can help us again. Our betta came down with fin rot a few weeks ago which we think lead to an internal bacteria infection, causing some bloat. We’ve had this tank running for a little over a year now, but we are still pretty new to the hobby and this is our first sick fish. For the first week of treatment, we dosed Maracyn and Ich-X. After that first week, we did a 20% water change and then dosed one tablespoon of aquarium salt to our tank (for 5 gallons). We added an air stone because he had some labored breathing. We fed him frozen brine shrimp mixed with focus, Kanaplex and garlic guard for the following week (2 small feedings twice per day, thank you to @Colu for the wonderful guidance through this treatment). And after that he seemed to be doing better. His fins seem to be healing and he was even swimming to the surface to eat the pellets we slowly began introducing back to his diet (2 pellets in the morning, 1 at night). His breathing was easier, too. We did another 20% water change on Monday and this was going to be his first week with no medication in the tank (except what was left of the aquarium salt after the water change). But since yesterday he has been laying on the floor of the tank, and he seemed to be breathing hard again. I’m not sure if we messed things up with the water change, but I wanted to be sure his tank stayed clean since he’s still recovering. We turned up his air stone a bit and added a teaspoon of aquarium salt back to the tank today. He has been eating but losing color again. From certain angles it looks like his scales could be sticking up a bit, but most of the time he looks normal. We also noticed the spot on his gill in the photo just today. Would it be ok to do another week of Kanaplex feedings? Or does anyone have other suggestions? We don’t want to be too aggressive with treatments and make things worse, but we also don’t want him to be uncomfortable. We’d appreciate any advice anyone might have!

@FlyingFishKeeper sounds good, thank you again for your advice! Our brine shrimp and set up should be arriving today (pipette included) so I’ll work on getting those to him ASAP. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping I have some better updates on him by the end of the week.

@FlyingFishKeeper thank you so much for your detailed reply! I’ll try to get some brine shrimp eggs. Do you think it’s ok to feed him even though @Irene advised fasting the fish for a week to keep the water clean? I definitely don’t want him getting too weak. @nabokovfan87 thank you for sharing those links! I’ll be looking into these today.

Water Parameters: - 5 gallon - One betta, one nerite snail - 79-80 degrees - Ammonia: 0 ppm - Nitrite: 0 ppm - Nitrate: 0 ppm - Buffer: about 80 ppm - PH: about 6.8-7 Hi everyone, My betta fish seems to have fin rot, but I’m not exactly sure how as we test our water weekly and offer him a varied diet. We did a water change last week and put some catappa leaves in, but it made the water cloudy so I removed them. He was still eating, but only being fed about once a day, and became a little bloated last week. I fasted him for a day and then we decided to medicate him for his fin rot (based on @Irene‘s video with Maracyn and Ich-X, dosed for the 5 gallon). So he will be fasting until Friday. He still seems a bit lethargic, but is still interested when you go up to the tank. I have a couple concerns I was hoping some of you could help us with: 1. Is it safe to fast him for 8 days if he’s had a light diet up until the fasting? He still seems a little bloated. 2. Does anyone have an explanation as to why the water could’ve become cloudy after adding the catappa leaf? 3. Our water parameters have been consistent, so I wasn’t sure what to change about his environment to help with his stress. Does anyone have a suggestion of anything else we can do for him? Is it best to just wait a week for the medicine to work? Thank you all! Stephanie

@Wingman12r Our first filter is on the lowest setting so that should work. But since our tank is small, your suggestion makes sense. Thanks for your input!

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! We are planning to move in April (only about 2 hours away) and we have a few questions about moving and upgrading our tanks. We currently only have one male betta, one nerite snail and some live plants in a 5 gallon tank. We plan to upgrade our tank when we move, but still have a few questions. 1. We will upgrade our fish to a 10 gallon tank. We got a sponge filter for the new (10 gallon) tank and we’re planning to let it run in our current (5 gallon) tank until the move. Does anyone recommend turning off the current filter (but leaving it in) and only running the new sponge filter since it’s such a small tank? Or can we just run both? We’ll need to leave the current filter in the tank either way since we plan to move the sponge filter to the new house ahead of time. 2. Ideally we will be setting up the 10 gallon (with the seeded sponge filter) at least a week before putting our fish in. Aside from adding in some bottled beneficial bacteria, should we be prepared to do anything else before we move in the fish and plants? Just water testing before and after adding the fish to check parameters? 3. Lastly, since the drive will only be a couple of hours, is transporting everyone in bags the easiest/best way? As always, thank you to this kind community for your help!

@Guppy Guy thanks so much for your input and I appreciate you tagging the others! @Guppysnail They both seem healthy and unbothered, so that’s good news! We’ll continue keeping an eye on them. Our tank’s been cycled since April so we’ve had it for a bit now. But that’s a really good point, and thank you very much for passing that information along. It definitely puts my mind at ease!

Hi everyone! I posted a little while ago about some dark spots I found around the walls of my tank towards the top of the water. I received some helpful advice that it could be some kind of algae, but noticed that it’s now on our decor. I’ve checked the dots under a magnifying glass and they do not look like they have legs or seem to move. I can easily remove them from the tank walls with a silicone scraper, but I can’t seem to find any information to confirm what they could be and they seemed to spread pretty quickly. They’re all fairly uniformly sized and don’t seem to break apart at all when I remove them. Tank info: 5 gallon 1 betta 1 nerite snail filtered kept at 79 degrees water is tested weekly Ph 8.0 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Nitrate: 5 ppm Thanks everyone, I’d appreciate any help!

@xXInkedPhoenixX got it, thank you for your input!

Hi @xXInkedPhoenixX, thanks so much for your reply! Agreed, it’s nice to know. 😊 To answer your questions: I took a small silicone scraper and was able to remove them from the tank walls with ease. What I thought was odd was they kept their shape after I removed them (they didn’t smudge or seem soft like algae). But they didn’t seem to move at all, either.

Hi everyone, I’ve found a lot of helpful information on this forum and I’m looking for some guidance. I left town for about a week and came back to find these on our aquarium wall by the top of the water. I tried to find some kind of identification for these tiny brown specks in our tank, but the closest I could find looked like a parasite so I’m concerned. We have some copepods in our tank, but these do not seem to move. Some background of our tank: 5 gallon Ph: 8.0 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nirtrite: 0 ppm Nitrate: 5 ppm Filtered (no chemical) Heated to approximately 79 F 1 Betta fish 1 Nerite snail Weekly water test (with API Freshwater kit) & change We’d really appreciate any help or advice you have as to what they are and how we can get rid of these if we need to!