jwcarlson

My fish got into and ate the entire jar of freeze dried brine shrimp from ACO a week or so ago. Since then he has gone prowling for fish food and knocking so much stuff over every night. This morning he had broken a brand new bottle of Easy Green and it leaked all over and absorbed into the cabinets my 10 gallon tanks sit on. Now the cabinets have grown up through the floor and into the kitchen. So before work I made a quick bear bag and hung up all my fish food so he couldn't get to it. What a pain.

It probably won't hurt. Regarding your pH, I would ditch all the pH additives and maybe get some crushed coral. Also, 75% water change sounds good, but only if you test your tap water as it's possible the tap water is causing the problem. And continue to not feed for a few days at least.

Ich X is also supposed to help with nitrite poisoning (but I do not understand the science). Your pH might not be conducive to bacterial growth for your filter. Might be too low, though the test strips I think are almost impossible to read. I don't think you need new filter media, I think you need to stop pulling the filters out and replacing them. Those replaceable filter cartridges are basically a scam. I wouldn't do anything other than rinsing them until you get things stabilized. Then replace them with sponges.

I know we all take 27 horrible pictures for each one that might be somewhat usable. Let's see them. scleromystax barbatus

There's at least three fry in this bucket and it is teeming with little critters for them to eat. Pencilfish or CPD? I am leaning hard to pencilfish based on body shape and markings.

It's always tough to give advice without seeing what's going on or witnessing it. First off, I'd stop feeding the fish if you haven't already. Second, I would test your tap water with one of your strips and see what they look like. And then I would do as big of a water change as you possibly can (and still provide the correct temperature water). If you can post pictures of the tank and/or your test strips that might also help. Welcome to to the forum, by the way!

When you say that you're doing monthly filter cleaning/changes, what do you mean there? Rinsing the media or are you swapping out entire pads for new ones? How are you testing your water? Test kit with liquids or some sort of test strips?

Borellii?

Thank you, @Guppysnail! Do you run them 24/7 for this type of application or would it be worth putting it on a timer to be on 12 hours/off 12 hours kind of thing?

I think so. They've only been hatched 2-3 days. My experience last time I had a successful spawn was that it took a week or more before they were free swimming. One of them was curled up and I thought it was dead. I sucked it up in a pipette and swished it around and it fell out of the egg shell that I couldn't see and then started break dancing on the bottom of the tray. 😄 And was straightening out even before I left for work. I do see tiny clear looking extensions in the stomach area which I believe are the yolk sacs. They're not as round as my very limited experience with other fry. It's more of yolk tube. If that makes any sense. Again... limited experience here. But top one what "normal" fry look like to me. Bottom being what the CPDs usually look like to my eye.

I'm thinking about putting a UV sterilizer on my fry tank. I have a suspicion that my *sometimes* struggles with fry might be partially due to my really hard with high pH water being a petri dish for biological activity. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions of models that have worked well for you. This is a 37 gallon system if that matters at all. I'm not looking for a silver bullet and might not even use it permanently. So more of an experimental thing, really... want to test some ideas I've got.

I have thought so many of these were dead only to have them go zipping off when I poof on them with a pipette. How can they be this small...

I agree, they don't look fertile, but am also no expert. I think it's nice they lay a bunch in one area, however.

I've been using two of these for the last two years and they have been great. I have been thinking about setting up some sort of semi-auto system myself, but I have some additional utilities that you don't have so not sure the thoughts bouncing around in my head are applicable for your situation. Plus I don't have a rack, but I would like to semi-automate just a couple of tanks, basically. Thought about making some PVC overflows (I think King of DIY has a video of how to make one) and setting the height of the overflow to XX% of what I want for the water change. Basically putting a valve on the outflow, turning that on and being able to walk away, then just come back and top everything off that drained. That's what I do with my discus tank, it has a dedicated siphon line that runs through the way and down into the basement sink with a splitter valve that allows me to drain from one line and then flip two valves and fill from the same line. It's worked well and makes things quite easy for me. It takes about 15 minutes to pump 70 gallons of water about 15 feet up from my basement to my discus tank. To get an idea of flow rates. It moves a lot of water. The second one I use in the basement to refill tanks from my aging barrels and it's *a lot* of flow when pumping just a few feet of head.

@Razan Unfortunately, with that size of tank, no fish is really going to be able to live long-term. If at all possible, I think I'd suggest that you see if you can re-home that fish because goldfish get BIG. If you can manage that and you've been bitten by the fish bug, then I would do some research... save some money... and hunt for deals on a larger aquarium. Most every fish should have at least 5 gallons. There are some shrimp and plenty of snails that can live down in smaller containers, though. And they can be every bit as interesting to keep as fish! If you stick with fish keeping for any length of time you'll come to understand that basically every fish thinks it is hungry all the time. 🙂 One of the more difficult tasks for some people in the hobby is to not always give into that urge to feed them! I'd really really cut back feeding now knowing the size of your tank while you look for another home for it (or another tank). Sadly, it's not a suitable home for your fish and will inevitably end poorly.

We'll see how it looks in the morning, if it more or less looks about the same as it does now, I'll give it a shot. The only issue is, I don't see how it could ever be able to swim above the bottom again. But I could probably find a way to give it a life.

Maracyn 2 is one I don't have. For antibiotics I've got kanamycin, nitrofurazone, and erythromycin... maybe something else I'm forgetting. I've got some epsom salt in, poor thing seems a bit stressed (rightfully so). Breathing quick. I'll see how it looks in the morning and see if it seems like she'd be able to make it with something else in the water. The swelling on the top half is concerning, I'm thinking that perhaps whatever is swelling pushed the swim bladder to the point of bursting through the side. To be honest, I was close to dispatching it when I saw that, but once the bubble popped out it seemed to calm down and just lay down on the bottom. Thanks, @Colu!

Well, I have never seen this. That's a rupture or tear in the side of the fish and air bubble coming out.

I don't even know what a boule is, @Shadow!

Forgot to add that I also have a host of other meds I can use as needed. Diet since I've had them is primarily live BBS with some ACO fry food and assorted other flake/pellet periodically.

Yesterday, I noticed a one of my pencil fish wedged up in the corner of the tank. I thought maybe it was a weird spawning thing or something, but it didn't move. I disrupted it and it took of swimming and it was doing the "classic" head up fighting to swim up that I usually associate with a swim bladder problem. These fish have been with me about 6 weeks. I have not wormed them yet, but have put them into a 55. There's 12 total and I thought maybe it was a breeding injury, but other than the males sparing and pecking at females they don't seem too rough on each other. I have been counting these things daily since I got them because I've never had them before and always convince myself I'm missing two of them, so I'm pretty confident that this fish was behaving 'normal' until at least very recently. I thought it looked almost like this fish was bitten around the middle, looking almost crimped. There's nothing in the tank that could do that. All that's in there are six Scleromystax barbatus and a few nerite snails. I lost it in the floating hornwort and last night I was busy with kid Christmas concert, so I didn't look for her. Saw it again this AM, so netted her out and put her in a hang on box so she's not fighting any of the other fish and also less flow, though it's only filtered by sponges so there's not a lot going on in that regard. I've never had good luck with epsom salt, but have some of that and could try it. Any other ideas? It seems almost like there's some swelling up on the back area that's flexing the tail down and giving it the crimped look.

Welcome! Sorry about your black moor 😞 I'd cut back to just feeding once per day. When you change water, do you use any sort of dechlorinator or water conditioner? When you say really small tank... how small? Do you have any sort of test strips or anything to check your water? Long stringy poop can also be a sign of worms.