[Help identifying disease]

I have a three-month-old south American cichlid tank. Water parameters:

• pH 7.5
• Nitrates <20
• Hardness 
• Nitrite 0
• Ammonia 0
• KH/Buffer
• Water Temperature 80 degrees

I was away for a few days and returned to one sick fish in the tank. Does anyone know what this is?

[Tank support questions]

I know at ACO, they have tanks that are only supported on the ends. See the attached photo.

Two questions:

• Does anyone know what size tanks are in the photos? They look like 20-gallon highs to me.
• Can you do that with a 40-gallon breeder?

I'm setting up a new rack system and would ideally support only the ends to save room between tanks.

[Going Out of Town Prep]

I’m gone for 5 days about once a month. I turn lights off and CO2 off and don’t feed the fish. They are fine for 5 days if they are normally well cared for.

[Plants in holding]

Following this thread and I’m also curious about what people do for long term plant storage. It seems helpful to have extra plants around. 

[Newbie from Baltimore... may ask a lot of questions :).]

Hi All-

I am an aquarium newbie. Well maybe not completely new. I had an aquarium 20+ years ago for a few years but that was a lifetime ago and I enjoyed it but when we moved to a new house we didn't have room for it while we renovated.

I stumbled back into this. Before Christmas I had googled "presents for old people" looking for a gift for my 80+ year old parents. One of the ideas on the list was this. I thought that was a great idea. My parents are animal lovers, live in a retirement community, lots of time, low maintenance. So I bought one, set it up, let it run for a while, and stocked it. It is still at my house as they have had covid for the last two weeks. I'll be dropping it off at their place next week.

Once I had it setup I remembered how much I loved having fish before and since then have gone a little nuts and have added three more tanks. I started with the Betta tank (Mr. Blue)

Then I made a tank in our family room:

Then I put a tank of pea puffers on my desk where I work all day (my personal favorite):

Last thing I've done so far is buy another 14g cube like above and a 10g quarantine tank.

It's been fun. Really into learning about plants. I never did that before.

Now for the challenges:

Back in the old days I never quarantined anything. I think I was just young, lacking internet, and didn't know better. So I've filled each tank without quarantining and without medicine. I lost 1 fish in the biorb, 7 fish in the family room, and 1 pea puffer. So I'm currently doing the med trio on everything.

I also didn't cycle (again didn't recall that was a thing). So I got things to temp, added de-chlorinator and bio kickstarter.

Learning my lessons.

I'm getting ready to build a 40g breader for 2 pairs of blue rams. Going to do that one right. Build next week, wait a few weeks, quarantine and med the fish, and hopefully have much better success.

The forum has been exceptionally helpful teaching this dog new tricks. Nice to have a community like this. I'm also going for customer of the month with Aquarium COOP I think. I've been placing an order every other day it seems. I don't know what the sticker thing is all about but I've gotten a lot of stickers. Nice job running the business @Cory. I've owned a bunch of different businesses and I am sure this one is challenging and rewarding.

Also have a well stocked local fish shop, House of Tropicals, in Baltimore. Can't speak to how they run things yet, but they have a ton of fish and supplies which is also nice.

Looking forward to meeting people.