KittenFishMom

I'm not sure what to do now. I have been looking at and trying to photograph my betta for a long time. I think he may still be constipated, but I can't tell. He is holding his right red fin higher than his left, so I can't get a clear view of the shape of his belly. I went and scrubbed my eyeglasses and when I came back I realized he was eating some of the Xtreme nano food that was in the water I put in the specimen holder. I tried a few more pics and quickly put him back in his dark water isolation tank (1.5 gallon + 2 IALs makes very dark water.) He was swimming around and generally acting normal in the clear water. I didn't see a food with my dirty eye glasses, and I had absent mindedly feed that tank just before I got the water out for looking at the betta. The betta was happy to eat while swimming around. The pics are bad, but they were the best of the ones I took. I don't know if I should give him another 15 minute Epson bath and not feed him, and wait another 24 hours, or do something else. Trying to net a black fish in dark water is frustrating for both of us. Note: I bought him to keep in a 10 gallon female guppy community tank, so controlling how much fry and food he eats in the future with be tricky. I really like his colors and crown fins. All advice welcome.

I gave the betta a 15 minute Epsom bath last night, and his profile looks better this morning. I gave him a drop of freshly hatched baby brine shrimp. In 30 minutes or so I will add some female guppies to eat what every brine shrimp may be left, then put them back in their tank. The water in the isolation tank is very dark from the AILs. Should I swap some of the dark water out? I tested all the tanks last night and all have 0 for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites. Thanks for your help, KittenFishMom

@Colu should I mix up a gallon and then warm what I will use? Should I use some of the dark IAL water from him tank or straight fresh bottled sprung water? @Colu should I mix up a gallon and then warm what I will use? Should I use some of the dark IAL water from him tank or straight fresh bottled sprung water?

We need help. Next evening update: The little betta has a black body and red crown fins. He has been in the 1.5 gallon tank about 36 hours. It is very hard to see him because the 2 IALs have turned the water tea colored. I did scoop him out and he looks to same shape to me. I do see a short white line through the bottom of the glass, which I think may be his anus. I can't see if there is any fecal matter on the bottom of the tank. iIf there is, it might be from the guppies. I did give him a drop of freshly hatched brine shrimp last night, and he ate some. I added 2 female guppies about 40 minutes later to eat all remaining brine shrimp. They went back in their tank about an hour later. I know the betta constipation treatment in general terms, 1) don't feed for 2 or 3 days. 2) offer high roughage like baby brine shrimp or a skinned steamed pea. 3) carefully timed Epson baths in water that are same temp as the tank. He is a small probably young male betta. I have had him about a week. I think he over ate guppy fry or community tank food or both I need help knowing the details: When and how much food to offer and when to start the Epson baths and how long each bath lasts and how long between baths. and the recipe for the Epson bath (I do have plain Epson salts) Any other details would be very helpful. Thank you for your help and support. KittenFishMom and her rounded betta

second update: I could see some brine shrimp vibrate with my flashlight, so I added to pregnant guppies to eat the rest of the brine shrimp up. I just started my brine shrimp hatchery, so the betta with the big belly won't get anything more to eat for 36 hours or more. The guppies will go back in the female tank before I go to bed tonight.

Here is a quick update. The betta is in the 1.5 gallon isolation tank with 2 IALs and a sponge filter and a heater. He is swimming around. I put in one drop of hatched baby brine shrimp to see if he was interested in food. He swam after them and ate the ones he caught. His profile seems to be the same. He isn't sitting on the bottom, and seem active given there isn't really anyplace to go in that tank. The leaves are at an angle, sometimes he is above, other times below. I could put a few guppies in for him to swim with and take them out and put them in their tank at feeding time. I'm not sure what else to do during these 2 to 3 days of fasting. All thoughts opinions and advice is welcome. KittenFishMom

Is any one/thing spying on your tanks? I spotted this frog

When his isolation tank gets up to temp, I'll move him there and feed the pregnant guppies. they get very excited when I get near the tank to watch the betta. The betta is swimming all over the tank, poke under things. He acts like he is looking for food. I won't feed him, but he is active and swimming and acting normal.

@anitstukI have not seen one, but there could have been at some point.

The guppies kept photo bombing. really messed with the focus. I can put him in something smaller if you need a clearer photo. this shows his outline pretty well.

@anitstuk I'll try to get some photos. I'll even wipe the glass first.

I put a small male betta in a tank of female guppies to help control the population. Now his belly is rounding down below his body. I am afraid he has eaten too many fry or too much of the dry food I put in for the guppies. I am setting up an isolation tank. I hope the second new environment in a week won't stress him out too much. I am hatching baby brine shrimp. Should I offer them to him tonight, or wait until morning? Water is bottled spring water with crushed coral and wonder shell (well is being fixed, but went bad in Feb) water parms: nitrate 25 nitrite 1 (GH) above 300 KH 40 PH 6.8 chlorine 0 Temp 79f

@rockfisher I started in plant sci and studied plant genetic, branching out to animal sci, a bunch of pre-med, pre-vet courses chemistry, comp sci and stats along with one off courses like ocean navigation and piloting with the Navy ROTC, and metal sci. I love to learn new things. I always picked the "for majors" classes over the "for non-majors". I use to moonlight in research support and statistical analysis for PhDs candidates in a very wide range of fields. Look in my early posts to learn where the word "nerd" comes from. I really enjoy "knirding". No harm done at all.

@Flumpweesel It wasn't close, I was in tears. I really care about the fish, but I had to get the population under control. We left the minnow bucket with him and got lunch so he could deal with the guppies between customers. I was a little worried that he would just flush the fish down the toilet when I left the store. But when we came back and he showed me the tank he had opened up for them, I know he would keep them and sell them. He said customers like to buy the bigger guppies. Most of the guppies he gets are very small and often weak. I had been feeding these high quality food and freshly hatched baby brine shrimp. I've added crushed coral and wonder shells to the water. I just couldn't lower the temp and the amount of food to stress them into not giving birth. I took the plants out of the aquarium, but added IAL and driftwood to give them places to poke around. There is lucky bamboo in the HOB filter. It was such a relief to see those big females settled in their new tanks.

@rockfisher I backed into the hobby by getting a 120 tank for the garage to hold my fishing catches until I was going to visit Mom. I would take her live fish and clean them and have then in the pan within a few minutes. She was on chemo and most things didn't taste good, but she loved fresh fish. That 120 was my first tank. I had a blast filling it with bullheads and mudpuppies and pan fish and crayfish and all sorts of stuff from the lake. In the fall, I had to empty the tank because the garage gets well below freezing. A lot of the fish went to a nature center, I got a 55 gallon for some of the smaller native fish. In Feb, the last of the native fish went to someone with a big tank in the Fish and Wildlife department. Around November, I got some tropical fish to put in a 10 gallon tank. The guppies where a craigslist purchase. Feb 28th Mom's dr said she could not be alone and needed 24*7 care. until the new chemo started working. She died June 30th. in the mean time, the guppy population exploded after I added plants to help with the nitrogen because we could not get to the tanks often enough to keep up with the water changes. I lost most of my fish, besides the guppies, which I divided among my 5 tanks to try to balance the bio-load. I am retired and never planned on breeding or selling fish, I just wanted to enjoy them. We are very busy dealing with picking up the pieces and trying to put our lives back on track, and take care of Mom's home and estate and our home and cottage. Driving an hour to sell fish just doesn't fit in the plans right now. I'm in a centrally isolated area of central NY. Not a lot of option right here right now. Around here they say the only reason to grow zucchini is to keep your friends from giving it to you. I think guppies are sort of the zucchinis of the fish hobby world. I need to get some sleep. I count guppies instead of sheep. it work faster.

I talked with the LPS owner, and explained my guppy situation and he said he tells his staff to say a limit of 20 guppies, but in my case he would take more. It started off with the owner asking how many guppies I had. I told him "more than you want". I said I would bring an insulated minnow bucket with a bubbler containing a batch of guppies, and he could take what he wanted and I would take the rest back home. He said most folks just put them in a bag. I said it was a 30 minute drive and it was a hot day and I didn't want to stress the guppies more than I had to. Then he asked how I ended up with so many, and I explained, and he said he would not send any back home. I took him about 40 of my largest adult females that were heavy with eggs. He was very happy with their size and condition and put about a third with his female guppies and the other two thirds in a tank he opened up for them. The lighting was brighter than what I had at home. Their bodies looked like polished silver, and the colors in their fins really showed up nicely. I had picked out some items to buy and he said I didn't need to pay for them and my guppies were welcome anytime. When I got back to the cottage, I split out another tank full of females to fatten up. I hope to take him more in 2 weeks or so. I'm still not very good a splitting them up. My female tank have some males swimming after all the females. And the male tank has a few females with too many males swimming after them, but that makes them easy to spot and catch. They have too much on their mind to worry about a little net. I figure if I rehome the females first, Then I can take my time with the males, and keep some for myself. When last guppies are down to a manageable population, I will start my build on my 55 gallon tank. No guppies in there, that is for sure !

I vote for water ! I would put gallons and gallons of water in that tank before putting fish in it, but that's just me. Looks like a lot of folks with a lot more experience than me would skip the water step and put the fish in before the water, but that never works well for me.

@rockfisher I photoed of the bottom of air pump below. I could move the fish, but the drip is slow, so I didn't want to bother them so soon before moving them to a new home. Way stress them so soon before the move?

@rockfisher oops thought you were asking about the leaking fish tank. The filter is a disk of what looks like black felt. It fits in a cup with a hole in the bottom that snaps into the bottom of the fair pump, about an inch across.

@rockfisher Not yet, the guppy fish are still swimming in the tank. the drip is on one corner at the bottom. I can't see where the water is coming from. It is slow. Hoping to rehome the fish in a few days, then empty the tank. I think it is a glass tank. all edged are sealed. It feel heavy like glass, not light like plastic. I'm now sure how you can tell for sure, short of dropping it on a sidewalk.

I think one of my aquarium is leaking what is the best way to find and fix the leak, or is it better to put new sealant everywhere? Should all the old sealant be removed first? It is a tall 10 gallon hex, so I would rather fix it than pass it on for a mouse home. I was trying to find a replacement and didn't see any 10 gallon hex tanks out there. Thanks much.

My Aquaneat Ultra Quiet air pump's (model AP-404, which seems to be sold under other names, like AQQA) intake filter got clogged with dust. Where do I buy a replacement filter, or what should I use to replace the filter?

@Fishy101 I have had all 3 corys for 7 or 8 months. I am not sure, but I don't think cory females can carry fertilized eggs. I was looking at the eggs that are left on the wall of the aquarium with a lighted 30 x magnify glass, trying to figure out if they are developing or infertile or semi-eaten. After I while I realized one of the eggs I was studying was a water spot on the outside of the tank. I might put a few eggs in the breeder box. I have ben test and changing and testing water after the changes, so the fish have been seeing a lot of me up close and personal. Plus add in the huge glowing, blinking eye studying the eggs, and they might have bad dreams tonight.

The ones I call peppered have big random dark slotches on a like back ground. The others have several lines of small dots. I must have the names wrong. Aqua Huna's HiFin Paletus corys look like what I call my 2 peppered corys. but without the high fin. https://aquahuna.com/collections/catfish/products/hifin-paleatus-cory Their Sterbai corys look like my single cory https://aquahuna.com/collections/catfish/products/sterbai-cory?variant=30674413944875

My guppy population's member are growing, even though I think I have the frys under control to a good extent with a male bettas. I decided to split up the guppies into 2 additional tanks. I had saved the media and snails from the last tank I broke down in a buck with an air stone. I was feeding the snails algae pellets and pinches of fish food, but I was careful not to over feed. (This is key, I wasn't thinking "ghost feeding") I though it would be useful in I needed to start a new tank. I started 2 tanks to try to separate the male and female guppies. I pulled a sponge filter from an active tank, which cycled just fine. I put the used media from the snail bucket in the other tank. I could not get the water parms to drop, even with a lot of plants. Then I realized that I had not been truly ghost feeding the media that was in with the snails. I got a sponge filter out of an active tank and it was cycled the next day. I am sure there was good bacteria in the media in the bucket. In my attempt to keep from fouling the water, I had let it die back to what was needed for the snails. Don't make this mistake, learn from my mistake. active media is wonderful. Just make sure you keep it active. The bucket of snails in reproducing nicely and will go to the person who took my goldfish as a stead supply of live food, and window washers.