jwcarlson

My MTS have kind of leveled off as I've fed more live and higher quality foods, but they can really reproduce quickly. I use very little flake. Most tanks don't have many MTS, but it's a result of management. I, personally, would be way more concerned about the endlers. I've not kept them, but every live bearer I have ever kept does nothing but stress me out because they overrun EVERYTHING if you're keeping them well. The only way I would consider doing them again is if I was doing it for a specific purpose (like breeding to just check something off the list and just for one round). Or if I had a tank of larger fish that I could feed fry to. Agree, also, with the above about a kuhli loach. I've had them and moved them along. Never saw them much so didn't seem to make much sense.

Isn't that what the lids are for?!?

It's shorter, but more wide. 55 is 48 long x 13 wide (624 square inches). 40 breeder is 36 long x 18 wide (648 square inches). From memory there so it might be wrong. 75 is a good sized tank. Really depends on your space. I just set up my first 125 and I can understand the intimidating feeling! It's not even twice as big but if seems like it's 4x bigger than my 75!

I've had bad luck with RR, personally. But with anubais I've never had RR cause a single problem at all. They're pretty robust plants.

This is just me, but I'd get him on a trusted, parasite free food (prepared or freeze dried) to eliminate that as a possible source of contamination. There's discus folks that won't even feed Hikari frozen food because they're worried about parasites and consider any other frozen food to basically be asking for problems with a fairly heavy dislike for SF Bay stuff in particular. I personally feed Hikari frozen blood worms (sparingly), but I also have occasional bouts with worms... so perhaps there's merit to the concerns. Snails can also vector worms... though I have plenty of bladder snails in my discus tank and they do eat them when I crush them. Or at least a couple of them do. Does Pod eat from the surface at all? If he does that could make changing over to something else easier. Mine really like freeze dried blackworms, but they're expensive and usually not easy to find. And they float (but you can push the cube onto the glass, though it still breaks apart and goes all over). I just put the black worm cubes in and they peck at them at the surface and it works well. Initially they only wanted to eat them off the glass. I don't know what all foods you have, but you can probably find something he'll want, though it might be a pain. What is your water change routine like? If I were you I'd be doing a DEEP, 100% gravel vac daily. If you don't usually gravel vac, then I would ease into it over a few days. But the substrate is likely one of the major causes of the reinfestation. It's tough getting a good clean in my discus tank and there's nothing on the bottom. I wish you and Pod luck, he's got some fight left in him!

@TrashPanda_XD my male apistos have been pretty good in community tanks, but I don't have a ton of experience with them, so take that for what it's worth. A female might actually be worse from an aggression standpoint as she's more likely to stake a claim and want to breed. I don't know if I would try apistos with gouramis, but someone else might have experience there.

20 minutes of peroxide probably did it. If the rhizome is OK, it might recover. I destroyed my biggest anubias about a year ago with peroxide. It survived, but took a year to get anywhere near what it was.

It's the biggest aquarium I've ever had, I know you've got a bunch of massive ones, but this feels almost insane to me. 😄 Thankfully there's a floor drain, though a lot of stuff is going to be wet if she goes.

Yes, @PluckyD, he is EXTREMELY thin which tends to point to internal parasites. Also notice the pinched forehead. Not a perfect shot, but here are some semi-head-on pictures of mine. They should be pretty beefy narrowing a bit towards the tail. But in general the main body should be even with the gills. It's a long road to recovery for a fish that thin. What's his main diet these days? What kind of blood worms are you feeding? Hikari?

I've got space for it, but I need one that my wife can't see. Maybe I can paint it camoflauge.

You had me moderately concerned because I couldn't tell if it had the steel mesh under it and it looked like you might have had 400 pounds suspended on OSB 😄 I think those are a good option for an out of the box stand. And honestly, they don't look bad. I'm trying to slow-walk putting in a rack like this with some growout tanks. Do you think I'd be able to hide one in my basement right in the middle of the walkway to our oldest's bedroom and the laundry room?

What do the bottom of those shelves look like, @Mattlikesfish36?

If you're doing mostly/all bottom dwellers, a 55 likely "wastes" a lot because the footprint is so narrow. It's really kind of a strange footprint, honestly. A 75 would be a better option and the same length as a 55 (48"). That said, you can accomplish a lot of those fish in smaller footprints. 40 breeder is a good, shallower tank size and actually has more square inches of bottom than a 55.

So, thinking a bit more and have a few thoughts. Just spitballing here. Slime coat shedding is common for pH mismatches or some irritant in the water. I think it's also possible that water with "microbubbles" can cause it as well. Are you noticing it after water changes? The other piece of the puzzle here (and I know I touched on this earlier) is this is a schooling fish being kept alone, so there is some baseline level of stress that you cannot relieve. It's possible that he felt more safe in quarantine (lower lighting? Totally blacked out sides? Less foot traffic? Less shadows?) But once placed back in the main tank, he goes back to being exceedingly nervous. I think I relayed the story about a discus I put in isolation and he went on a hunger strike. Literally the minute I put another discus in with him, he started eating.

Wish me luck! This is the 125 I re-resealed 10 days ago. I actually do not think I had a leak after the first reseal. There's some discoloration from the spray paint on the bottom. Oh well, it's better sealed this time, I think.

Pimples are typically a result of low water quality and tend to go away when water improves. Slime coat shedding is interesting.

Is it possible the burrowing comes as some sort of sexual maturity occurs?

Unfortunately, your pictures are just showing up as black boxes for me, but that might be just a me issue. For the sponge filter, you don't need to have the uplift tube attached, it just makes it a bit more efficient. But if that makes it too tall, you can leave it off entirely.

That looks like a shrimplet paradise! 🙂

@PluckyD Do you have an overall picture of the tank? What's the substrate? It's basically impossible to get all of the eggs cleaned up if there's any appreciable substrate. I've noticed that even in my bare bottom tank, the fish that I observe eating off of the bottom most are the ones that have this recurring issue (assuming they eat some pop from another fish with worms and start the whole cycle over again). I've actually got one discus right now that isn't eating well and has started to lose weight. Even with quarantined fish that have been wormed in their own aquariums, it seems like every time I introduce another fish... I have one of my discus with worms a few months later. I don't think you can ever eliminate all parasites, but the population and health can be managed such that they are not actively causing systems in the fish. But then some stressor occurs and that allows them to get a foothold. Additionally, like humans and other animals, immune systems will vary by individual. In other words, it's likely that the problem is systemic/endemic. If the treatments aren't done to more/less perfection, it's just shuffling the problem off for a couple more weeks. I did levamisole incorrectly the first few times I dosed it and while it probably didn't "hurt" anything, it didn't necessarily provide the punch that it should have. And that's me speaking from experience, please don't take that as me calling you out or anything like that. That's one of my biggest complaints about discus. Or at least the discus I have. I'm willing to take some blame here as the fish keeper... but the amount of time and energy I have put into them compared to any other fish I have owned combined is insane. I've had them just short of two years and I have done probably 650 water changes on them. I backed down to 2-3x a week everything looks fine until two of them have bacterial nodules in their heads burst and I'm still fighting that little gift. Anyway, I'm digressing. Have you noticed any flashing in your fish? In some discussions I've had with discus people about my repeat worm issues some have suggested I consider Absolute Wormer, which I think contains flubendezole, which I think can have some other side effects that aren't great. Tail standing was mentioned as a possible problem. Not sure where you'd buy it, but here's an information page: Absolute Wormer+ (cloverleaf.uk.net)

@TOtrees what kind amount can you expect to harvest from a culture that big (20 gallons)? My water also seems to love to grow hair algae which to me seems like a daphnia killer as I assume they'll get tangled up in it. Has anyone experienced that? Will daphnia eat off the sides of the container? I know they're kind of a filter feeder, but I read people talking about them eating algae fairly frequently. When doing water changes/refilling I use water from a tank now, but initially when I set it up I used bottled water. Or at least I think I did, but I got paramecium cultures the same day so I might be crossing that up. I know I used bottled for the paramecium for sure. It's been tank water since, however, for the daphnia. I don't think I have any snails in with them yet, that's easy enough to do. Is aeration necessary or at lest of benefit? I have very low bubbling, it's very dialed back. But in a bigger container I could probably turn it up and still not mix them like brine shrimp eggs, which seemed to be the issue in the smaller containers.

@PluckyD the whole tank should probably be wormed with levamisole (see above). Alternatively,a long-time discus breeder suggested to me some time ago a course of levamisole as follows... A 24 hour levamisole treatment on day 1, day 5, and day 13. I also recommend keeping aquarium salt in and during treatment add also epsom salt at 1tbs per 10G. Levamisole dose is 90mg/10 gallons for 24 hours with as big of water change as you can do after the 24 hours including full wipe down of sides and bottom, vacuuming everything out. Levamisole dosage should be ~2 ppm... a ppm is a milligram per liter. 90 mg/37.85 liters (10 gallons) = 2.4 ppm. Including this if it helps you calculate dosage somehow on your tote. Edit to add this calculator I found: Levamisole Dosage Calculator (geocities.ws) I've had good luck with this with my discus. Be warned that levamisole can turn them off of food for awhile, so be cautious feeding.

Thanks, @memorywrangler, it wouldn't surprise me that the seams fail on these! I have never seen 2.5 gallon aquariums, I'll have to keep an eye out.

Our house is set at 58, but the basement is actually a bit warmer. Probably 60-62.

I bumped both of the smallest ones into 2.5 gallon containers tonight. There's copepods in both, not that it matters at all. There's still some daphnia in the worst one. I've got them in drink containers so it should be fairly easy to change water. I'm probably overfeeding them, that seems to be a common theme for me. 😄 @Lennie Out of curiosity, how is your fry container filtered?