813aquatics

My first tank 25 years ago was a 10gal kit my Uncle encouraged me to get. I stocked it with mickey mouse platys, several black mollies, and two albino corys. Everything retail was artificial plants and decor back then. Now I have tons of tanks. Latest is another 20L for some apistogramma caca. to breed. Still really wanna try browntail pencil fish in there.

Just to add anecdotal evidence but I just had a bad breakout of epistylis and successfully treated with a very high aquarium salt dosage, but do heed your dosing instructions as I’m not sure how puffers handle it.

As others already mentioned, Petco no longer does dollar per gallon 😕

Oh my gosh I need that fish. Stunning

Yup, watched the stream and the Member’s video he released last night as well. I am satisified with his take and am not overly concerned at the moment, at least until the language around “minimal quantities” and such is elaborated on. I think a lot of the environmental benefits the changes could lead to are lost on many of us due to our love of the hobby. It is important to be reminded of what a privilege it is be able to possess exotic fish from around the globe. But I have seen my own backyard (Florida) drastically altered due to irresponsible pet owners, be it burmese pythons, lionfish, brown anoles, armored catfish / plecos, livebearers, iguanas, you name it.

I think that’s awesome

Just hatched my first ever bbs yesterday and wow the results are immediate. All my fish, not just the fry, went crazy. Neon Tetras decided school’s out for the day and it became a feeding frenzy. Cherry barbs in a different tank instantly began mating displays. I am using the San Fran brand hatchery Cory endorsed a few years back but the Ziss one looks so nice.

Hey all, A local hobbyist shared this with us today and on a first quick read through it seems like it may be significant, but I am not a lawyer. Any one more learned than me know about this or understand if it will change the status quo? https://usark.org/2022lacey/ From the link: “Briefly, the amendments will: Provide that the Lacey Act bans the interstate transport of species listed as injurious. Specifically, it replaces Lacey’s current language ‘‘shipment between the continental United States’’ with ‘‘transport between the States.” Create a “white list” of species that can be imported. This means that any animal (reptile, amphibian, fish, bird, mammal, invertebrate) that is not on the white list is by default treated as an injurious species and is banned from importation. Create a new authority allowing FWS to use an “emergency designation” that becomes effective immediately after being published in the Federal Register unless an extension of no more than 60 days is allowed. That means no due process, public input, hearings, advanced notice, etc. for injurious listings. Permit FWS to not allow importation if a species has not been imported in “minimal quantities” (to be defined) in the year prior to the enactment of this Act. The effective date would be one year after the enactment of this Act.”

I know you are against social media but if desperate fbook is *always* loaded with active hobbyists eager to take in fish to rehome. LFS are very hit or miss when it comes to taking in oddball fish. You can always have a family or friend who uses facebook post on your behalf.

I use tap treated with chloramine and treat with prime. For some of my tanks that water is ok to go pretty quickly, and I’ve never had any loss nor seen ammonia read over 0.25ppm. I let the water sit for my tanks that need a bit lower ph but haven’t ever had to worry about chloramine/chlorine once treated with prime. As for the ammoni detoxification, my understanding is that it temporarily (no longer than about 24hr) converts ammonia/nitrite to non-toxic/less-toxic forms that can be filtered out by your biomedia. It isn’t a permanent effect, so if your tank isn’t seasoned enough it may cause issues after a period of time. I say seasoned bc while your tank may be cycled you may not have a sufficient size colony of bacteria to handle major spikes. I would be testing your tap water parameters daily and also let that water sit and compare tests over time. I don’t know if you mentioned how old your tank is or not but I would be surprised if prime is the point of failure because for the majority of people it works pretty flawlessly. If you are super suspicious of prime coop sells alternatives like fritz. There are also a lot of different reasons shrimp could be dying off, be it hardness, ph, temp. If you could do tests and provide all of your parameters it may give a better idea of what’s going wrong. I think you’d be seeing a lot of drastic symptoms from your fish prior to them dying off if they were suffering from ammonia, but that is just my experience.

Trying to make it there on Saturday. Fingers crossed!

If you have ich or epistylis (looks like ich but protrudes off their body), then you may be best off with dosing 1 tbsp aquarium salt for every 3 gallons (can be increased to 1tbsp per 2gal or 1gal but make sure you check your species tolerances). Temperatures of around 84-86F will speed up the life cycle of ich but that may back fire if it isn't ich so use caution. You can use other antibacterial/fungal meds like kanaplex mixed into their feed for good results as well.

Can you link the product? I am having trouble finding it to research.

Hello from FL! What have you stocked your 10gallon with or plan to?

I think you are doing things pretty perfectly to start out. If you mod the HOB so that your media includes sponges/polyfil/ceramics you will have far better results than expensive cartridges, like you pointed out. Having the sponge filter doesn't just add additional filtration but it's also a very useful fail-safe if something were to go wrong with your HOB, especially power outages. Losing power to your HOB may mean losing any beneficial bacteria colony housed inside of it and your media. Losing power with a sponge filter doesn't pose the same risk, as it remains submerged. Additionally the sponge filtration will provide excellent aeration which is especially helpful when starting out. You can't really "overfilter" per say, it eventually just comes down to space and appearances. In my 20L I always use this same setup. When it comes to maintenance you can also rotate between which filter you clean on a given cleaning, allowing your system to experience less stress if you were to accidentally remove or kill a bit of the bacteria on one filter. If you want to further increase the biological and mechanical filtration, you may want to consider adding a coarse pre-filter sponge to your HOB intake. It will also save you maintenance headaches/extend your HOBs life by keeping large particles from damaging your impeller. Look forward to seeing your tank's progress!

That link is wildly useful, thank you so much. Going to treat with ich-x and pick up some antibiotics to mix in with food. I’m confident I caught this early so fingers crossed.

Here is the best shots I could get. As you can see the spots aren’t visible when you look at her from the side but when viewed head on you can see numerous bumps of varying size all over her.

Morning nerms! So this morning I noticed two of my four mollies in my 37g community have what my initial assessment/panic seemed to be some kind of ich or fungal infection that looks like small gray/translucent bumps on the side of body; however they are not small white specks like ich, they are semi-random but looks more like their natural slime coat color, non-uniform in size. No other fish in this tank (barbs, kuhlis, bn pleco, betta) show any similar signs of potential illness/stress at this time. I isolated the fish for now in quarantine but then I thought to check temperature. I live in FL and we dropped from 70 to 32 F in 24 hours outside. When I checked my thermometer it just so happens that this tank’s heater somehow was slightly unplugged and therefore tank temperature crashed from 80-81 down to 65 in a span of 10hours while I was at work. Would a sudden temperature crash potentially cause the mollies to rapidly develop these sortof spots as a response to stress? I am trying to not panic and overtreat a problem/disease that isn’t actually hurting present. The tank is well-seasoned, no new fish in 6 months, no deaths, and no new objects/plants have been introduced in over a month except some catappa leaves a few weeks ago. Parameters reading 0 ammonia / 0 nitrite / 40-60 nitrate. The fish I isolated are not showing any signs of discomfort. I have ich-x and paracleanse on hand but am hesitant to dose. Because the spots are not classic white and the mollies are dalmatian/mutt grey it is hard to get a clear picture. Thanks for any assistance.

Ah yes, the forbidden corn 😂

Here is a link to a previous CARE forum discussion that may lead to answers if not at least some food for thought. The more down the rabbithole I go with learning about anaerobic/anoxic activity the more I realize there is so much more to the “nitrogen cycle” than I previously understood. There are some really excellent YT resources related to this topic as well:

May I ask what your magnesium levels are reading at and also what you are trying to achieve by lowering it? Are you doing saltwater tanks? From my readings you would need to do water changes to reduce magnesium. There are lots of ways to add calcium to your tank depending on your needs. You can add cuttlebone if you just need something for snails/inverts, you can add a wondershell (coop sells em), and also add crushed coral, either in substrate or in your filter media. Those are probably the three cheapest/easiest ways of introducing calcium, just know doing those methods may (will) impact increase your hardness and ph.

How “new” is your tank? Depending on how new it is you may have not had enough time to build up a colony of beneficial nitrifying bacteria in your filter/substrate/surfaces. These are critical to converting *very* toxic ammonia into still toxic nitrite which is then converted to relatively harmless nitrate through additional bacteria colonies. Depending on your bioload, your initial fish may not have shown obvious signs of distress - and some species are especially hardy to subpar water conditions, danios being pretty tolerant. I could absolutely see a scenario where you add sensitive fish like cardinals and corys and the sudden increased bioload spikes ammonia without sufficient bacteria to break it down. It can takes weeks/months to naturally build a suitable bacteria colony and the growth comes in phases typically. Through continuous water testing you should see this process play out. As for what you can do this moment….if it is water parameters causing the problem….do daily water changes between 50-90% (treat to remove chlorine/chloramine and try and match tank temperature if you can). I’d also test your water straight from the tap so you know your baseline parameters. You could also try adding something like seachem prime every few days to temporarily convert ammonia/nitrite into less harmful forms (this is a bandaid not a longterm fix mind you). If you really want to do things right I would highly recommend contacting a local fish shop and/or facebook local groups and ask anyone for some cycled tank media or a seasoned sponge filter. This will give you an established bacteria colony and solve a lot of your issues. Keep an eye on your fish for labored breathing, red gills, ammonia burns, and test daily if you can. Another tip would be to not clean your filter for awhile and when you do clean it, don’t scrub surfaces just soak your media in tank water until it looks clean-ish. Despite appearances, maintaining a “slimey” filter interior is actually a good thing most of the time. If your water turns out to be “okay” I would look next at potential disease that those new fish may have come in with. What testing kit/strips are you using? API Master freshwater kit is solid and you can do daily spot checks with Aquarium Coop’s test strips

If you want both types you can always stack one on the other, I can’t remember which they recommend putting on top though.

Sponge filters are awesome, have five. With this I always include the airstones, check valve, tubing, flow valve. Lowkey I get a lot of use out of the $1 pipette and the measuring spoon (the tiny measurements on backside are super useful). The aquascaping tools have held up well so far too. If you have plants get the curved scissors you won’t regret it. Easygreen has been good so far. Gotta love that pump bottle.

Thank you! this very much what I had envisioned doing.