jwcarlson

I have an RO Buddie and am happy with it. It's about $100. Installation is easy, you can connect to faucet or hose, just would need some adaptors.

Is there an RO membrane installed? If the replacement kit has the same issue I would be thinking there's a plumbing issue on the unit. Can you find a connection diagram/picture in manual and compare?

I'm not getting my hopes, the hongsloi have been do this for months without spawning again.

Hope everyone plays nice together! 🙂 I need to get some caves that I can actually kind of see into! Beautiful fish!

How long is your light on every day?

The abacaxis were putting on a show this morning. They've become quite tolerant of me.

An established bacterial colony multiplies very quickly. Just take some media out of your canister and put in HOB. Or... Clean out your canister in a bucket and run the HOB in that to suck up all the goodies. Next step is to always have a sponge filter running in all your tanks so you've always got a filter when you need it. 🙂

I edited to add the fact that the order was in transit when I made the post. 🤣 These predictions are getting real good.

A couple of days ago I made a reply to a thread saying I can't get moss to grow. And my AC order shows up today... Notice the packing list. Is this a sign? Do I owe Cory some money? Here's the kicker... The order was shipped before I made this post (ordered Wednesday last week). *roll The X-Files theme*

The paper towel routine is simply to remove all the biofilm and organic buildup that you can. These organic loads can deminish medications effectiveness. Additionally, anytime you are worming anything, you want to siphon as completely as you can. Impossible to do with substrate, really. But it's always impossible to get 100% of anything. You're trying to be sure you remove as much of the parasite load as you possibly can. The other side effect is that the fish with be in pristine/optimal water and that's always a good thing for recovery. I don't know if feeding the medicated food is good or bad if his eating is hit and miss. It's tough to know how much he may or may not be getting. I would guess it's unlikely to hurt, but it's possible some sort of longer term metro exposure might be detrimental, but again, I would guess not. You can try the heat and salt independently from metro. My experience was the fish would get a bit better, but as soon as I took the temp down they'd eventually end up worse. Overall discus really seem to love warm water. I though they would be stressed at 93 but they seemed to love it. I still keep mine at 85 unless I am leaving for a week, then I will drop to 82.

My experience with hex was it seemed really up/down for awhile and then the bottom dropped out. Considering the symptoms, I'd do the metro course. Metro is quite easy on discus, it certainly won't hurt. When he's eating snails he is doing this during his hiding and "down" periods? Discus can be really picky if you let them. It sounds like he has grown pretty well considering.

Regarding "this point", mine did the same with the on/off. My guess is weakening a bit overtime. What I realized was even when they looked like they were eating, they actually weren't or at least not as much as it looked d like they were. Consider the fish's social side of life as also part of its physical well-being. If an animal is hard wired for survival and a crucial part of that is being part of a school, it will undoubtedly be detrimental to its well-being to be without that part of the equation. I am not at all saying that this is the cause of the ailment, but I think we'd all agree that it certainly doesn't help. So it's possible that some of the hiding is related to being stressed, but there's no real way to quantify that. Part of responsible fish keeping is keeping fish within your means. I waited 20 years to get discus because I knew I wouldn't be able to properly care for them when I was younger. Please don't take this as me being mean, that isn't the intent. Just an observation that expecting a fish to thrive when basic needs are not met can be problematic. Regarding your fertilizer levels, what is your water change routine like? You say weekly or every other, but what percent are you changing?

I think metro is the right play, but I'd suggest getting pure metro. Bump the temp to 93 (you might have to QT the discus to do this), 1-2 TBS of salt per 10 gallons. 12 days of metro (dosed every day) in water not food, usually they're not actually eating when they get to this point, black out the tank. Don't bother feeding him for at least a few days. Discus metro dose is 500 mg pure metro per 10 gallons of water. Again, you're probably going to want to put the discus in a separate tank. Daily do as large of a water change that you can do and still supply stable/preheated water, wipe down sides and bottom with a paper towel at least every few days during treatment before water change, and then dose the full 500 mg/10 gallons + salt you took out for 12 days. After the 12 days slowly bring the temp back down to your normal tank temperature. Your discus would be absolutely fine in a bare bottom 10 gallon tank on his own during this time. The temperature ramps up the metabolic rate, the metro is killing the hexamita, and eventually he'll start wanting to eat. Two of my discus were very sick with hex and this metro treatment routine saved one of them and he's actually one of the bigger fish in the school now. The other, unfortunately, was too far gone. This sounds like classic hex in discus, by the way. It might take the course of the full treatment + some days before the fish really starts to improve depending on how bad it is. Additionally, discus, like most schooling fish are most comfortable in groups. So it would probably be best to get him some friends. But first, get him healthy, he is a good looking discus! 🙂 30 ppm of nitrate is also pretty high for discus and it can take awhile for poor water quality to show itself outwardly. A lot of that can depend on your water. If you've got nice acidic water it limits a lot of bacterial overgrowth so you can get away with less maintenance. My water is 8.2+ pH and if I let my nitrates creep up much above 15, my discus start getting bacterial nodules on their fins. I don't let it get beyond that.

I can't get moss to grow, unfortunately. But I'm thinking I can come up with something.

I might have my own cultures living in my CPD tank, I do not vac the substrate (Fluval Stratum) in there at all. I know most of this stuff exists normally, but trying to gauge what I might be doing to not have them thriving. I also don't really use gravel, most everything is sand which might not offer great environment? Mulm and debris just kind of hangs out on top for the most part. Thanks for the advice!

Very interesting. I VERY rarely see any of these type of things in my tanks. I'm sure something like that is around, but I just don't see them. And I am observant, I feel. Like I'll see planaria when there's a number of them there and detritus worms from time to time. And these things are easier to see than some of that stuff. I think I'll get a culture and see what I can do. The adults don't bother these little things? Any other management techniques? I don't suck up what mulm/debris I can when I do water changes. Should I leave some level do you think?

How do you seed tanks? Simply fry powder in order to encourage their populations? Or something else? When you feed the powder fry food, how much are you talking about adding? Thanks!

I have not, they're in very different water. But I could drop another male in a breeder box up in the corner and see what happens. Hongsloi this AM. I took all the small caves out awhile back and the next morning she had nipped fins. They're looking better now as she has one good spot to hide. Abacaxis female this morning (and her male watching from between leaves). She has never looked this good and I am not sure she's not prettier than the male, at least right now.

Everybody's apistos making babies except mine. *kicks rocks* 🤣 Abacaxis female was trying hard to get her male into a cave with her this morning. Hopefully they're getting serious!

Happy to report that spixi snails decimated the hydra and combined with taking an extended break of feeding BBS, there's barely any to speak of. Spixi's laid eggs and I ended up with about a dozen babies. Unfortunately about half of them died when I tried to relocate them (what the heck?). The others are growing nicely. Hopefully they mature OK and give me another egg cluster. I've ramped back up the BBS and am feeding them that twice a day about 4-5 days a week. The Hongsloi pair cohabitated OK, but the male did get a bit more aggressive when the female was taking what I assume was a diet induced break from flirting. They seem to be back on good terms both displaying for each other seemingly constantly. She's got a beautiful rosy belly and is wearing her bright yellow best all the time. I'm going to start mixing in some Rapashy into my feeding routine for them. They eat pellets and BBS and flake, but I feel like I'm missing something meaty. They also eat freeze dried tubifex, but I'm not positive if that could be a bloat issue if fed frequently. Also replaced all apisto caves except one for the Hongsloi. The male just flat-out doesn't fit. Not sure if that's a big deal breaker or not, but now that he's grown up it's not even just a "tight squeeze". I gave them a 4" terracotta pot with a bigger hole chipped out of it. He'll go in there with her. The smaller cave is mainly for her to have a place where she can 100% escape him, which is how she seems to use it, seeming to favor the bigger cave when enticing him. I might end up rotating the big side of the pot to the glass so that I can maybe see what's going on in there. They haven't spawned for awhile that I am aware of and if the next one isn't successful, I think I'm going to swap males. Though I have no idea what the problem really is since I can't really see what's going on. The Abacaxis get the same diet. Today marks the first I've seen the female get pretty darn flirty with the male and is starting to get the faintest of yellowish to her body. Hopefully that means they're happy with each other. I've been ramping up water changes again as well. TDS was below 60 when I last checked. I should drop my pH probe in and see if it's dropped down naturally at all. I've got a dozen pencilfish in QT right now that will probably end up split evenly between the two pairs' tanks. The Abacaxis are actually pretty tolerant of me now, though they're still more spooky than the Hongsloi. The Hongsloi remind me a bit of very small oscars. They're out and about all the time and they beg for food too. Because I got so many males with my three pairs (5 males), I've ended up with a trio in a 55 and they get along very well, almost always swimming together. Never really any violence, though without a female to fight over that's probably a big help. I've got another single male in a 40 breeder with tetras and corys and he is a total gentleman. I was watching the sterbai eat a big pile of tubifex worms this evening and he was even nice enough to wait for a opening in the cory pile instead of pounding his way in there. 😄 Forgot to add a pic of the male trying to get into the "apisto cave".

I've had poor luck with much of anything at 85 degrees. Anubias seem to do best. Pothos rooted in the water seem to do OK. I struggle with quite a few plants even at normal temps and I think that might have a lot to do with how hard my water is. I know other discus folks that have plenty of luck, so it's probably something I'm screwing up! 😄

It's been too long to remember everything that led up to the first successful spawn. I do know I've done plenty of water changes, but again... it's been too long to recall now. Today my daughter decided we should get some pencilfish for the apistos, so the tank is occupied for a few weeks for QT. I'll tear it down and give it a full cleaning and then give the CPDs another whirl.

I never really successfully raised fry other than my first batch. For some reason, the eggs never really hatched again. I cannot pin-point what the problem might be. I tried iterations just leaving the parents in a tank alone for a few days and not messing with the eggs. Then separating them again. Absolutely no luck. I did get like... 3 tiny ones at the wall clinging stage. I was leaving for a bit so I sucked them into a pipette and put the parent tank, which is a total jungle. I mean, I went about 3 months without really seeing a CPD. The good news is... some have survived outside of my efforts. So there's now at least 10 or more in the parent tank now. At best, I contributed three of those. There's at least a few more, but it's hard to see them. I went down to idle on basically all my tanks, not really burned out. But certainly bummed out with the continued CPD failures. And my apistos have also been total failures. I'm planning on trying to find some people looking for male Hongsloi. They're beautiful fish, but of the three pairs I bought, I got only one female. I've had three in a 55 and they actually get along really well. They're neat fish, but I'm really wishing I had another pair... what if one of these is sterile or something? Either way, I wanted to give them a big break, so I cut the BBS and just let them recover. They're ramping back up now, though I do not think they've spawned yet. But the female is in breeding colors and has a beautiful rose colored belly that she's showing off to him a lot. Also found out my male is way to big for "apisto caves". So I added a small terracotta pot and chipped a bigger hole in the bottom and she seems to be favoring that cave and they're both in there sometimes. Anyway... CPDs, I haven't really done much with since the last post. I idled down all of my BBS hatching too. In the last month or so I've gone back to one BBS hatchery going again so feeding all the possible breeding fish BBS twice a day about four days a week. And been doing lots of cleanout of the CPD breeding tank which was just a plant catch-all for the past several months. I believe one of the babies that did survive is a second female CPD now since I only had one before. So I'm hoping that two females with one male will end up being better for fertilization/breeding. They seemed to harass each other quite a bit when it was just 1:1. Thanks for asking, @TheSwissAquarist 🙂 I haven't given up, but I did absolutely settle everything down. Hope you're doing well!

Scuds

Are they actually swallowing the food? This is what I would try in increasing intervention levels... First, starve them... They can go a long time without food. I had one go months before it died. I routinely fast them for days at a time if we go on vacation, etc. The bad side of that is that you can have a sick fish for a long time before it becomes obvious. Second, discus are absolutely fine at high temps. You can go up to 93 F (34 C, I think) without any issue at least temporarily, wouldn't want to do that for months. I have temporarily fixed picky eating discus with high temp and salt. And they can handle a lot of salt. Easily two tablespoons per 10 gallons and some discus folks say more than that. So, hot water, salt, and starving. Bump it up a few degrees at a time, try feeding them what you want them to eat every 2 or 3 days. If they don't bump it up warmer a bit and try again. Cleaning uneaten food after offering. If that takes you to 93 and they still won't eat, you can dwell there for a couple weeks. In the past this has worked for me, but then when coming back down in temps they stop eating again below 88 or so. Third thing would be doing metro, you want to do it at high temps, that might be your next step if they still won't eat... 93 and metro. So at this point you might see why many suggest bare bottoms and limited plants. My experience with discus (while limited), has shown that they are susceptible to worms. Additionally, any worming effort requires very heavily vacuuming substrate and it's extremely difficult with gravel or sand. The other third option would be levamisole. I now worm all of my fish with pure levamisole at somewhere around 2.5 to 3 PPM. Treatment suggestion I have been following from a discus breeder is dose days 1, 6, and 14. Then another two weeks after that. Levamisole is done at normal tank temps and dose left in for 24 hours then as big of a water change as you can do including full side and bottom wipe down (I use paper towels). Levamisole will cause them to go on a hunger strike itself, so it is important to know that going in. If you have a QT tank you can do this in with a bare bottom that would be great because you want to get all the expelled worms and eggs as it doesn't kill the worms it paralyzes them. During levamisole I have also started doing 1 tablespoon of epsom salt and 1 tablespoon of regular salt per 10 gallons. How to tell if you should do metro or levamisole... again, this is in my limited experience. If they're eating minimally or pecking and spitting food out, metro seems to have been the way to go. That sounds a bit like your experience. For levamisole the symptoms have been more like aloofness. Corner staring, hiding in the back. For both levamisole (each 24 hour dose) and metro (daily dose for 12 days), I shut lights off and black the tank off with a thick blanket. Overall, if those are recent pictures, they look pretty good, but they can starve for a long time before it becomes really noticeable. So your observations probably have some merit. Usually a pinched head shows up. Feel free to PM me if this seems nonsensical. I don't visit forums very much anymore, so unless I get an email saying someone quoted me or messaged me, I don't usually check back, but I will try to follow what you have going on. Best of luck!