jwcarlson

I do not know what to think. Fins have some minor "melt" on tails and back of dorsal fins. Just did a big water change. Maybe their state in the morning will lead me to question the water somehow. Double checked pH to make sure not swinging and it is the same aged and in tank. 😞

Everything survived. What was the sickest fish is now the best (he is isolated). The other 9 are in a clump. So I think that eliminates the water as cause as it was from same source. Their tank is extremely cloudy. I think I must have wiped out the bacteria colonies in the sponges somehow. The only other marginal explanation is that the cat terrorized them last night because I forgot to lock him downstairs for the night (he bothers the kids tries to sleep on my face all night). I really doubt that this was the cause based on the cloudiness. Water parameters look close to what they did the first two weeks. Minor traces of ammonia, nitrite (so faint I can barely tell), nitrate low as I did not feed today. This sucks, but they're alive... No one was pitching side to side this afternoon so far and they are at least schooled. So maybe a minor improvement. Ugh.

I cracked a window in the house (one of the two panes) and put a bunch of clear packing tape over all of it so that it doesn't fall apart (all windows are being replaced this spring). You could honestly do that just fine and it would probably be "OK" indefinitely. I just recently tried to trim like a half inch off of a lid... how a 29 gallon lid doesn't fit a 37 gallon with the same dimensions (except taller) is beyond me. But it broke when I tried to snap the cut part off. 😄 So now I'm at least $50 into this lid ($30 for one and $20 for another) and I think I'm going to take it to the local glass shop and have them cut it for me. Just make sure no little pieces of glass can get out and present something for your fish to eat.

I almost hesitate to say anything about this, because I've got a really bad feeling about my discus. Going on their fourth week with me. All has been great, 9 of the 10 are growing well, but one has been very slow to eat and that's probably been happening since I got them, but I just didn't notice. Short story is he comes right up to the feed and is kind of lost in the fray. Eventually he started shying away more. And now I've noticed he'll come up and get pushed away, almost like he lacks confidence. But then about once a day or so he'll really aggressively go take a couple good bites. And the other day several people suggested I raise the temp a bit and that might spur him. So he ate better after that but the following few days he's been muscled out more and seems like he'll never get his share at this rate. So I made the decision yesterday and pull him out into his own 10 gallon. So after water change last night I did so. And he seems "the same" as he has been. Taking the advice of a few 'old hats' who do not cycle discus aquariums, but just do daily water changes and use prime and stability daily for the first weeks. All of this has gone pretty well, and the tank was partially cycled anyway when I got the fish. I was testing at least once a day for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Ammonia had a minor reading occasionally, just using the strips, so and every so slightly light green. But after a week or so that stayed at zero. Fish seemed unaffected during the whole thing. (daily 40% water changes). Nitrites a similar story... every so slight pinkness. And that went to zero about a week ago and remained there for a few days. Last night while I was slurping water out I just decided to ammonia and nitrite. Ammonia showed like 0.25 PPM on the strip, which I'm not saying is a real measurement, but what I would consider "presence". Now I'd just wiped all the interior glass, wires, tubing down. So thought maybe that could cause it to look high. Finished the water change, filled up the 10 gallon for the "sick" discus, and remembered that I had another bottle of Fritz Zyme 7. I'd used a bottle the day I got the fish. I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to put a little BB dose into the 10 gallon and because I saw some ammonia "why not" dump the rest into the big tank. So I did that and dropped the elevated tank temp down a bit from 90 to 87 as it was already at about 85 from the water change. So fast forward to this morning, I'm up at 4:30 (every morning). Little dude in his new tank looks fine and it's holding 90 degrees like it was when I went to bed at 11:30. I didn't look at the big tank right away as the light doesn't come on until 5:30. I play with the dogs and dink around the house for about an hour like every morning. A bit after 5:30 I go drop their morning beefheart in. They don't go after it and they don't swim up to "beg". Hmm. Don't think much of it as I've fed them too soon after the light first comes on and they've been weird before. So I take my shower and come back. The fish are all "apart". They're near the top and while watching... one of them kind of pitches over horizontal and then rights itself. And that happens a few more times. No one has even acknowledged the beefheart. I think suddenly that maybe there was more ammonia than I'd thought and that the BB I dumped in caused a nitrite spike. So I check everything. Ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate <5. There was a quite a bit of debris on the bare bottom which must have come from the Fritz Zyme (lights were off when I dumped it in and I know there's some solids 'stuff' in it when I've used it in the past). But there did seem like a bit more. So I vacuumed the bottom and the beefheart up. Triple checked the temp which was as the temp controller said (86-87). Dosed prime again and refilled the 10ish gallons I'd taken out. Unfortunately all I had was overnight aged water that was only about 76 degrees, probably, but it didn't drop the tank temp much at all. Also added salt. If my barrel was up to temp I'd have done a 55 gallon change. I feel terrible and I am hoping that I just threw them for a bit of a loop. Pretty upset that I dumped the stuff in, but having used it like four times previously including once on these exact fish and this bottle having come in the same shipment... I don't know that it should be a real concern. I was going to run home at lunch today, but know that there's not anything I can really do I'm just letting it weigh on me instead. I keep replaying everything I've done. I recently upgraded to a bigger water barrel, but this is like the 4 or 5th (60-70%) water change from that barrel and would guess that whatever issue there might have been would have been there from the initial change. I have an additional heater coming as the "open box" one I bought on Amazon was a dud and my water change water isn't quite up to the right temp, so changes are dropping the temp a bit... but again this is like the 5th change like this and it hasn't been an issue before. Last night doing the water change I noticed a gross perfume-y smell when I bent down to clean up some water. Our 3 year old smelled kind of like it earlier in the afternoon and figured she sprayed something from my wife's collection of stuff. I looked all over and couldn't find the source and the fish seemed fine. This AM I smelled it more and did eventually locate a bottle of "room refresher" that was up on my book shelves where little one couldn't have gotten to it. I don't think anyone has sprayed it, so I'm guessing that was just a wiff I was catching sometimes. The tank didn't smell off at all. Thinking that's just a red herring. I'm absolutely dreading what the scene might look like when I get home. 😞 Somewhat thankful that I have training and meetings most of the day to keep my mind off of it. But sitting here during a lunch break allowed me to continue grinding away in my mind. Hoping they all come rushing over to say "Hi" when I get home, but really really worried they're going to be belly up.

I'd look after 30 seconds and then look every minute after for say, 10 minutes, and see if there seems to be a time at which the colors get extra screwy.

Just plop them in a bucket or tote and set up the new one. If you don't think you can get it done in a reasonable amount of time you could refill the 20 even just "on the floor" if you think you need a day or two. But if you move the filters over and dechlorinate the water you don't really have much to worry about.

What do the instructions that came with the strip say? I don't really look at anything except nitrites and nitrates on the Co-Op test strips. And I don't care about what the chart says for PPM. If I dip it in for the three seconds and five seconds after I pull it out, the nitrate square is getting pretty pink, I know there's a lot of them. On my discus tank there's barely any color on it after a minute, but if I don't pitch it right away the nitrite and nitrate squares show a tiny bit of color after it dries over 10-30 minutes (or a day). Whatever process that's designed around that reaction, there's a reason they give you a time after which to look at it. Go by the instructions on the container and (in my opinion) don't use it to try to quantify how much nitrate or nitrite you have, but simply use it was a rough estimate. If I dip in my planted tank and there's a very light pink after one minute, I'm going to give them some Easy Green. If I dip and it's a deeper pink, but not boldly pink. I wait on the Easy Green. If it's dark pink I need to do a water change. If for some reason I need to know "exactly" how many PPM of something I have... that's what the master test kit is for.

I have an auxiliary digital hanging on the front, a heat controller in the cabinet with digital readout (but have to open the door). The stinking aux one went loopy a few days ago and just kept reading a degree higher every day and went it got to 97 I finally turned it off. So now I have to remember to open the door and look. But currently with the daily WCs I'm doing for the discus I'm well aware of the bath water they're in. Pretty cool they seemed to take the 65 degrees just fine. Kids are so "fun" to have around aren't they? 😄 A handful of years ago one of ours filled the little 10 gallon in their room with paper and socks. 🙃

I think Cory had a video of some he was growing floating. I've definitely had some loose trimmings or breakoffs floating around quite a long time, they start growing roots. They might not grow as fast as rooted in substrate, but that might not be a bad thing. I just trimmed my big plant again and put all the trimmings in a catch-all 5-gallon bucket that I have sitting around with extra trimmings and floaters in. They were still green this morning when I added some water and it's been a couple weeks. Not sure if any of that helps.

I'd personally move them back to the ten gallon as the "problem" seems to follow the apistos. I've never had apistos so can't comment on if they can be murderers or not.

How does this stuff compare to a $4, 50-pound bag of Quikrete all purpose gravel from Home Depot? It really looks very similar to me. Attached is some Home Depot gravel in one of my tanks. Small rock pile front left made of some river stones that I got in a big bag. Something similar is probably also available at HD, but I bought these elsewhere.

I just listened to his Inferno yesterday. I was writing something at work though and I think I only caught like a quarter of it. 🙃 And then started listening to Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby today. Again, difficult to pay attention at work. While I was changing discus water tonight I resumed Lullaby and I was like "what in the world is this even about" over halfway through it. I do get the overall jist of the story, but I would not pass a pop quiz about it. TDR is pretty good. But I think The Great Hunt is better. This will be spoiler free, but my complaint/worry about WoT just being rug-pull after rug-pull for the next 12 books. Overall I've found the conclusions of each book pretty anti-climatic/immemorable. I'm still plenty early in the series, though. If I powered through seven Witcher novels waiting for it to "get good", then I can probably push through 15 WoT books. 😄

I bought a Kindle paper white awhile back. It's not horrible, but I just cannot read long things on a screen. I struggle with it at work too and often end up printing out anything that I need to read "cover-to-cover" because of it. I don't know if it's discipline or some sort of sensory thing or what. I just know it's a struggle. The Kindle was no different, but I gave it a shot thinking that it would save a lot of money (maybe?) and space. All I know is if we end up in sort of post-apocalyptic world, I don't want to be stuck trying to charge my Kindle so I can read. 🤣

I've got to be careful, I have not often met a suggested book that I didn't want to buy. 😄 I have an extensive "to be read" collection.

My dad fairly recently finished The Farseer Trilogy (borrowed it from me, but I haven't ready any Hobb, yet). I will eventually get to it. In fact, once I finished burrowing my way through this 4th Wheel of Time book, I'm going to take a bit of a break from WoT. At least one good sized book and maybe two before I jump into #5. I have been slipping short little books between (like Sanderson's The Rithmatist), but I don't think it's enough of a "break".

He's in a community tank. With tetras and corydoras. And cherry shrimp. They all seem to get along pretty well. He seems to sleep lodged into the middle of the big floating pile of water sprite. He'll eat flakes out of my daughter's fingers and sometimes tolerate being "pet" (poked at) when he's cruising around.

Yep, was in 10 gallon quarantine and then everyone popped over into the 37 gallon and sprouted.

Fins lengthing a lot here the last month.

I bought some snails on EBay from a highly rated seller that sold a lot of them. Figuring that they'd have good packaging/heating included since it was mid-winter. They shipped it snail mail (pun intended). Took like 10 days to get here. I could smell it in the mail box from about eight feet. And even knowing they were all going to be dead, I still opened them up because that seemed like the right thing to do. Toothpaste is a decent way of dealing with it, though I am not convinced that it actually cleans anything off better than anything else. I think it just also masks the smell a little. Bee-Go for pushing bees out of honey supers? Smells like bottled vomit? They also have those stainless "bars of soap". I can't say that I've ever used one.

Appearance. I don't really like how the bare bottom looks because it's kind of reflect-y and I can see the stand through it a bit. And it's dark. So I want to brighten it up a bit. I did have sand in the tank, but that was a bit of a pain, so I sucked it all out.

What's your water's pH straight out of the tap vs in a cup (or some other container) left to age for a day? With an air stone if you can.

I think this is an important point. 0/0/0 readings 🤔

Sunfish are under rated. In college I kept a green sunfish. Converted him over to pellets and he was about as interactive as most cichlids and in general a fun fish to watch. I had him in a 29, which looking with the prism of being 15 years older seems far too small. Will be interesting to see if they'll spawn for you, that would be very cool. And to see the male's breeding colors, of course! 🙂

What water parameters did you check and what were the values? What have you been dosing every day?

I'd hang the filter right on the back. Assuming your 10 gallon had a HOB. I did this when moving from 10 gallon to 37 gallon. Now it's got two HOBs on it. Also moved sponge filter over.