[Help!! They’re invading!]

Lol @Tre he's a beauty! I love how his one eye is blue - so unique. Honestly, I don't have much experience with snail disease, but I have definitely lost a few nerites at random times for various reasons. One being my temperature was too cold, but they do awesome in the betta tank since it's warm and they seem more active. So I think they definitely prefer warmer temperatures, upper 70's for sure. 

Ramshorns are ridiculously hardy haha I love them the most for that reason. My tanks are flooded with them, so not surprised yours is strong and healthy. They're amazing algae eaters too.

As for the Ludwigia... hm. Good question, Ludwigia species are well known for being great low tech, low maintenance plants. I don't have a reason for you as to why we wouldn't have them at the Co-Op, but hopefully I can find out. I'd love to see some in stock! 🌿 Keep me updated on the betta and best of luck! 🐌

[How I'm Treating Fin Rot in my Betta]

@Tre I'm around the Philly area too! So I can relate with the hard water situation, it's a struggle sometimes.

Your setup is really nice! 🙂

You could definitely up salt if you've been conservative or go ahead and run meds if you feel so compelled. Furan and the Erythromycin work well. I'd recommend to remove your Anubias and other plants there if you decide to increase the salt a hefty amount - salt can damage plants through dehydration.

If Mizu is fin nipping though, I'm thinking that may be a whole different problem to solve to figure out what is stressing him out! 😛

[Help!! They’re invading!]

Would probably take a worm scientist to tell with 100% certainty what type that is, but I can personally relate! I had a massive amount of what I determined to be Rhabdocoela flatworms in my cherry shrimp tank once and these look exactly like mine did. Not due to overfeeding either because I was only feeding that tank like once a week. I'd be really shocked if you have planaria because I've ALSO had those in my tanks unfortunately. They were unmistakable as they had the distinctive triangle-shaped heads and grew quite large after a few weeks. I could spot them from across the room. Ew! 

Anyway, I eventually put a betta in the tank with the Rhabdocoela worms and they disappeared within about a week, I'm convinced he may have made a snack out of them lol 🤷🏼 or perhaps it was a coincidence. Either way, I never found any chemical or mechanical method of removing the Rhabdocoela worms entirely, so I just left them be and they disappeared after awhile. There is a whole micro ecosystem living in our tanks and sometimes unexpected visitors are just part of the process. 🙂

P. S. please don't tear your tank apart, your aquascape is beautiful and your plants look great!! 

[Hello fish fam, Greetings from PA]

Welcome to the forum, Mick! I'm from PA too, currently living around King of Prussia/Phoenixville area. Your planted tanks are outstanding - the first photo you posted is AWESOME. Everything looks so healthy and lush! I'm totally geeking out haha Thanks for the inspiration and best of luck with your breeding set up 🙂 

[What did you get done today?]

Started going through ALL of my aquarium stuff with Jimmy for the big move from PA/Ohio to Washington! ... Yes I am bringing boxes of sticks, rocks and soil all the way across the country... No, I am not a crazy person-- just an aquascaper 😜

Boxes to keep and boxes to donate, gotta keep it balanced haha

[How I'm Treating Fin Rot in my Betta]

39 minutes ago, Irene said:

Super helpful! Thanks for documenting your success story with his treatment. 

Thanks, Irene! We've been making so much progress, I couldn't come to terms with the idea of leaving him here in PA, so he's coming with us to Washington along with Jimmy's Mata mata turtle 😂 This fish is going to be a world traveler!! 

[How I'm Treating Fin Rot in my Betta]

Thought I'd share my success story here ☺️ - my betta has been battling fin rot for a good few months now. Or at least that's how long I've been noticing issues. I believe one of the most important aspects of treating fish is identifying the root cause. In this case, I determined that I had simply gotten a bit lazy with his tank.

Knowing bettas can be exceptionally hardy and the fact that my tank was already cycled, I was only doing water changes every 2 weeks or so. Sometimes longer. Fast forward about 4 or 5 months to mid-April, when it peaked. The fin rot began as some red discoloration on the ends of his fins where they had previously been white. This is usually the first warning sign, discoloration.

Nearly 5 days after I started noticing this, it had progressed to almost the entire loss of his tail (top photo) and I could knew acting fast was my only option. I got my 5 gallon hospital tank ready with my air pump, airstone, heater and a few silk plants I had on hand to make him feel comfortable. 

My first step was water changes - a lot of them. Keeping the tank CLEAN. I was doing a 50% change every three days with a teaspoon added of aquarium salt per gallon that I was changing. (PS. never add SALTwater to top off SALTwater, only add it when you're changing the water as you could easily build up too many salts for the betta and stress him/her out even further.) I repeated this process for about 2 weeks. 

I could tell with the salt that the fin rot wasn't getting worse, but it also wasn't really getting any better. So, I progressed to treating with meds. I usually use this as a last resort, but I didn't have much time to decide and I didn't want to lose my fish while I waited around for things to improve. I used erythromycin to treat him as this antibiotic is commonly used to treat fin rot, is very accessible and widely understood. A good one is Mardel Maracyn found here. There was the potential that the fin rot could have been caused by a fungus. But in my research, I found that many people had success treating it as a bacterial infection with an antibiotic, so I wanted to start there and move to an antifungal if needed such as Ich-x.

I followed the instructions for the erythromycin and before the treatment was even over, I began to see improvements. I did not run a second round. His tail began growing back a clear-ish white color and later began to turn a dark blue/black which was very similar to his original coloration. 

Now, I am feeding him a variety of his favorite foods and changing his water about every 5 - 6 days (with no salt) and just working as hard as I can to keep his tank sparkly clean. He isn't 100% yet as this type of infection causes a lot of damage which takes a long time to repair, but we are definitely in the home stretch!! 

• Water changes
• Try Aquarium Salt, UP to 3 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) per gallon
• Or Antibiotics, Antifungal or both
• More Water changes forever 

 

Top photo is just before I started antibiotic meds (April 19th, 2020) and bottom photos are from today. 

 

What he looked like the first 6 months or so after I got him! 🥺

[Hello Fish Friends! I'm Lizzie.]

2 hours ago, Irene said:

That's so cool that your dad taught you what he knows and you've keeping aquariums for so long! I love your Instagram too - so many inspirational aquascapes. 😍

I know, I'm so lucky to have him! He's a wealth of endless plant-y knowledge 😆 and thank you!!! I can't wait to get them up and running again once Jimmy and I are officially Washington residents 🥳

[Hi, I'm Irene 😀]

Irene! Your tank is awesome, love your big bunch of java fern in the right hand corner! Sweet 🙂

[Hello Fish Friends! I'm Lizzie.]

Hello all! I'm Lizzie 🙂 I have recently come on board with Aquarium Co-Op as a Program Manager. It's my job to help facilitate the many projects we have in the works to make our customers' and friends' fish-keeping experience even more awesome. My journey started when my parents bought me my first fish tank when I was a very young child and I've been keeping fish myself ever since. Over the past couple years, I have expanded my horizons as I discovered aquascaping as an art. My father is an aquatic botany PhD, so I already had some knowledge around how to successfully keep plants and it's just been an upward journey since! I am absolutely obsessed with learning as much as I possibly can about aquatic plants and I love answering questions and helping newcomers based on my own knowledge and experiences. Other than plants, I love to keep nano fish like Celestial Pearl Danios, Tucano Tetras and guppies as I mostly keep smaller nano size aquariums. I also have a betta fish named Derek (coined by Katie/Dorkula) who I love dearly!!

 

[800 Gallon Build Thread]

17 minutes ago, JimmyGimbal said:

Am I getting in this and planting it or what!? just don't leave ladybird in there while i'm in there.. she freaks me out. haha

LOL can't wait to see Ladybird in her new home!!! We must protect her at all cost 🥰