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Antichton

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  1. Antichton
    Hmm, I would expect to see more than just a couple isolated fish at a time displaying symptoms if oxygen is low though, right? I don't have any airstones in the tank, but I do have 2 HOB breeder boxes that are driven by air. I can turn up the air flow on these boxes. Alright, I'll give this a shot!
  2. Antichton
    Not that I can see; most of my fish are still eating well. I'd take a picture but no one is pooping right now....
  3. Antichton
    I suppose this is a lesson in quarantining new fish.... So I recently bought a few clown killifish from the LFS. They came in super tiny (around 1/4" long). I drip acclimated them to my water and put them in a breeder box so they wouldn't get eaten by my larger fish. One week later, 4/5 I bought are doing great (I lost one to a swim bladder issue that developed after 3 days). I was pretty happy with the ones I bought and wanted to round out the school, so I went back to the store and bought 6 more. 1 week later, and I've lost over half of the killies. To my eyes, they look fine on one day (eating and swimming normally), and then I wake up the next day to find 1 or 2 suffering from a swim bladder issue (either floating at the top or wriggling at the bottom). The fish with swim bladder issues died the next day. Normally, I'd just think of this as a bad batch or weak fish, but 3 days ago, one of the dying clown killies slipped through the grate in my breeder box and one of my gardneri killifish ate it. 24hrs after that fish ate the dead fish (2 days ago), it became lethargic and a 2hr after that started suffering from swim bladder issues. Furthermore, 2 of my 2yo clown killifish school and 3 of my guppies have died under similar circumstances over the last 2 days(became lethargic, started swimming at water surface, rapid gill movements, leading to death by nighttime). These fish did not come into contact with the new clown killifish. I don't notice any white spots or external parasites on any of my fish, and my remaining fish seem active and healthy. I've honestly been blown away by how quickly this disease/parasite has gone through my fish. I'm quarantining any fish that seem lethargic or have rapid gill movements in a 2.5g bucket dosed with praziquantel and methylene blue, and have dosed my main tank with praziquantel after doing ~50% water change, but I'm not sure if it's helping yet. Any ideas about what could be happening? I've attached a photo showing 2 "lethargic" fish who appear to be in the early stages of the disease. Here's a video showing the difference between how they behave and how the other fish in the tank behave: https://imgur.com/alCiJcR. TLDR: Fish become lethargic, rapid gill movements and swim bladder issues appear within 10hrs of first seeming lethargic, death follows within 24hrs. No apparent external parasites. Did ~50% water change and treated tank with Praziquantel. Any ideas about what is causing this/how to treat? Here are my water parameters, tank has been setup and running for ~10years: Temp: 75-80F depending on time of day pH: 7-7.2 GH: 200ppm KH: 80ppm Ammonia, Nitrite: 0ppm Nitrate: 20-40ppm
  4. Antichton
    Aquarium co op has an article about this. Relevant quote:
  5. Antichton
    So I was watching Foo the Flowerhorn's latest video, and he added some type of leech (alboglossophinia lata) that eats snails to his tank to combat a snail infestation. Was wondering if anyone else has tried keeping these. How would they compare to, for example, loaches or assassin snails for snail control? Shrimp safe? Here's a paper I found studying these leeches. The meat of the paper is probably irrelevant to keeping them in aquaria. Relevant quotes:
  6. Antichton

    Treating Dropsy

    Antichton replied to Jane's topic in Diseases

    I think dropsy is more of a symptom rather than a disease. Kind of like a cough; you can be coughing because you got an asthma attack, or because you have a cold. In one case, it is contagious, and in the other it is not. So whether or not dropsy is contagious or not depends on what was causing the dropsy. Here's a very graphic, but detailed video describing dropsy and some of its causes.
  7. Antichton
    I had something similar happen too. If the bleeding is under the skin, this is probably septicemia which is either viral or bacterial in origin. If Maracyn 2 isn't working, you might want to try treating with a different antibiotic like Maracyn (Maracyn 2 and Maracyn target different types of bacteria). See the top post here. The guppy that got this died for me shortly after showing the streaking (~1 week). I treated it with Kanamycin (per instructions), salt ("level 1" dosing), and methylene blue (1 tsp/gallon). After hanging in there for a bit, she dropped 3 fry and died. I did not see symptoms in any of the other guppies (the ones that didn't die at least...) that came with her, so the infectivity seems low, but the causative agent might be different in your case.
  8. Antichton
    Amano shrimp seem to enjoy destroying it as well. In my tank, I got this type of algae when I had high phosphate and low nitrate, but I have no idea how universal that is...
  9. Antichton
    Just hatched my first batch of these! As mentioned, the separation rate is insanely good. Mine took a little longer to hatch than the ones I normally use though, closer to 30-36hrs than 24hrs.
  10. Antichton
    I don't know enough about puffers to know for sure if it is gas bubble disease or not, but the large amount of small bubbles in your water after the water change suggests that your water is supersaturated with gasses. This can lead to something called gas bubble disease. I would recommend aerating your water change water before adding it to your tank. Although it is a little weird for this to occur if you are pouring in the water with a bucket...glad your puffer is OK though! Relevant quote: "Fins may be eroded with whitened fin tips and exophthalmia may occur with blood present in the anterior chamber of eye (...) Diagnosis is made by the observation of typical clinical signs and lesions. The presence of gas emboli in capillaries of the gills, fin rays, mouth and eyes are diagnostic."
  11. Antichton
    Another option is methylene blue. Nitrites react with oxygenated blood to form methemoglobin, which stops the blood from absorbing more oxygen, suffocating the fish. Not sure what the effective dose is for fish, but the lethal concentration of methylene blue is quite high.
  12. Antichton
    I was actually asking because I wanted to experiment with a blackwater tank! Very surprising to know that the Mopani wood provides tannins for so long!
  13. Antichton
    I would expect GH/KH creep upwards if you are replacing evaporated water with tap water; over a long time period I would not be surprised to see GH go from 4 to 16 in this case. It is curious that the KH did not increase in the same manner. Only thing I can think of that would lower the KH is algae metabolism or calcium carbonate precipitating out of the water since you mentioned you have no live plants. Maybe someone else has experience with this? I wouldn't bother changing the GH/KH as long as it is stable and your livestock don't appear distressed. The only downside might be that if GH is very different in your tank compared to your LFS, new livestock might suffer osmotic shock without drip acclimation.
  14. Antichton
    These look like the leeches that I find when I get blackworms. Pretty sure these give live birth; I cut them in half to feed to my fish so they don't propagate, and one time I cut one open, a bunch of little ones popped out from the middle...
  15. Antichton
    Love susswassertang. Tons of surface area for biofilm/microorganisms to grow, little pockets for fry to hide, and grows in like..room light.
  16. Antichton
    Awesome tanks! Sorry to hear about your shark and betta. Maybe it's just the camera, but it looks like your water has a lot of tannins in it. Do you put anything into the tank/water for that or is it just a natural result of running everything Walstad style? +1 for clown killies as top level swimmers. They're not shy and really helped my CPDs come out from behind my crypts. I'd recommend getting at least 5. I started with 2 males since my local LFS ran out, and the larger one was bullying the smaller one (swimming into him from the side) until I added 4 more the week after.
  17. Antichton
    I actually do exactly this lol! I feed my adult badis primarily baby brine shrimp, with a helping of live blackworms ~1-2x a week. I haven't noticed any particular deficiencies in the fish over the 4 years I've kept them. I feed the badis fry exclusively baby brine shrimp and have had no issues a year down the road. I do throw in some pellets to distract my more boisterous eaters to give the badis a chance to get the brine shrimp, but if you hatch large enough batches of brine shrimp, this is probably not a problem.
  18. Antichton
    I'd say the effect should be pretty small. The CO2 loss is probably proportional to the surface area of water exposed to air, which is going to be the surface of your tank (length x width) + the surface area of the bubbles. Not sure how accurate this site is (just googled it), but they give the approximate bubble size as "pancake shaped disks 0.16" in diameter", which has a surface area of about 0.053 sq in. And I counted maybe ~40 bubbles per inch of height in the pic of the airstone (assuming the airstone is about 1" long). So for something like a 20 gallon high tank, you'd have an unaerated surface area of 24"x12" = 288 sq in. You'd get an approximate surface area from aeration equal to the surface area of each bubble x the number of bubbles at any given time. From my estimate above, this gives a "bubble surface area" of 0.053 x 40 x 16 = 34.1 sq in. which is ~12% more surface area/CO2 loss compared to no aeration. Of course this is all guesstimation using data from a random website I googled so it could be completely wrong...
  19. Antichton
    I think it depends on the type of algae and how much of it you have. I kept 3 otocinclus in my 10 gallon tank a while back, but they didn't live more than 2-3 years for me. They helped take care of any brown diatom algae I had, but ignored fuzz/staghorn algae and didn't really go for the green spot algae either. Ended up having to feed them blanched zucchini so they wouldn't starve. The nerite snail should be sufficient to take care of most of your diatom/green spot algae in a 10 gallon tank. Not sure what eats fuzz/staghorn algae other than amano shrimp, but maybe someone more experienced can chime in.
  20. Antichton
    I just let my shrimp take care of the bodies most of the time. They're pretty efficient, all thats left is a skeleton after a couple days. Otherwise I bury em beneath my strawberry plants on the balcony.
  21. Antichton
    I would be careful with adding baking soda to your tank. Baking soda is made up of sodium and bicarbonate ions. While the bicarbonate ions should be beneficial for regulating KH and stabilizing pH, the sodium ions are not. As far as I know, no freshwater plant or animal will uptake a significant amount of sodium ions from the water directly. If one isn't careful to account for evaporation, there can be a build up of sodium ions in the water, which will probably have a negative effect on your plants and fish. A safer way to increase KH is to use a wonder shell or crushed coral which will dissolve slowly into the water.
  22. Antichton
    18.5g/ 4.625g/ 4 tanks Dream is to move somewhere where I can have a larger tank (20 gallon long the dream) but for now I'm happy with what I got!
  23. Antichton
    Yeah, they're great little fish! Very adaptable but a bit difficult to feed. I have not convinced mine that dried food is edible yet, but they do take frozen food if I dangle it in front of them to make it look alive. Hope you can find some soon!
  24. Antichton
    Caught my badids spawning last spring and saw 2 fry a month or so after that. They've spawned again this year, currently raising 3 little guys/girls. Here is big brother with one of the new fry. Just thought I'd share, first time I've caught my fish spawning (usually I just find fry when I clean the tank). Hopefully at least one of the 3 new fry is female, my current female is getting older.
  25. Antichton
    Mint does well for me, I usually have to trim it 2x a month so it stops shading my other plants. Got some growing out of one of the worm feeders (think they're for sale on the coop store) with just some filter floss and gravel wrapped around a couple of stems. My killifish like to spawn in the roots as well. I use the clippings for tea or seasoning food.
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