jwcarlson

I had bumped temp to 82. Yesterday AM it dawned on me that the *whatever it is* looked better in the mornings than it did in the afternoons. So I did a water change, but didn't dose Ich-X. This morning the fish look just as good if not better than they did yesterday, so another water change and no Ich-X. Somehow all of this has knocked my bacteria colony off kilter. I hadn't tested for a couple of days because I was doing it twice a day and everything looked exactly the same. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, <10 ppm nitrates. Then yesterday it popped nitrites so I checked ammonia and it was there as well. Don't know what to make of that unless repeated Ich-X was nuking bacterial colony. Fish don't seem too stressed or anything. I did switch to Fritz complete at about the same time as starting Ich-X, so maybe that caused some issue? Fritz Complete says 1 capful for 50 gallons so I do ~1-2 drops for about three gallons. To avoid using it I'm just aging/preheating the WC water which isn't too big of a deal. Also slowly turned temp back so it should be back to ~78 when I get home from work today to slow whatever might be going on. Will be interesting to see how they look tonight. Also... looks like my meds to make medicated feed will be here today and not tomorrow.

Thank you, ordered everything to mix up some medicated food. I'll keep doing the Ich-X in the meantime as the meds won't be here until Friday 😞 At least it doesn't seem to be getting worse. But article does say Malachite Green can be somewhat effective, so maybe that's holding it somewhat at bay for the time being. The spots do seem to be changing, but not really increasing in number or density. Thanks everyone! I'll update next week.

Seems to be at best a standstill. Looks like one spot on one fish's eye now. They are active and seem to be eating just fine. Any other ideas? Different med or pull them all out and into a tub or something?

Do you notice a blue tinge that sticks around? The blue is just GONE in really short order (like... 30 minutes or less). Makes me wonder if Fluval Stratum can cause it to react out or something?

Just going by label, it says up to as often as 8 hours. I can certainly wait. I figured at 12 hrs I would maybe get a better foothold.

Two small sponge filters and an Aqua Clear 20 with only sponge and bio rings. Getting ready to move to bigger aquarium, but wanted to dose in this smaller one instead for quartine. I was just bumping temp slowly so as not to shock them too bad.

Another pic, they happened to be out and about.

First noticed ich on Wednesday AM. Got new fish Sunday and Sunday afternoon did med trio. Then Wednesday AM saw ich only on the rummy nose tetras. Did partial water change after work and redosed Ich-X. Looked worse in the morning, did another change and another dose. Looked better after work on Thursday. Changed water and redosed. Now it's spread to other fish. Everyone is eating OK and I think med trio cleared some worms out of a couple of cardinal tetras that were pretty thin, they seem to be gaining a little weight. Been changing water and dosing Ich-X about every 12 hours since Wednesday afternoon. And it's not clearing up. Rummy nose look worse again today than last night. I know it's only 'killable' in the free-swimming stage... I bumped the temp up a couple of degrees (was at 76 got it to 78 now). If no difference in the AM, I might bump it to 80 when I redose. One thing I've noticed is that the blue color in the water is darn near gone within... half an hour? It's not there for long at all. Maybe that's normal. I've never used Ich-X and I haven't treated ich in probably two decades. Pic is best I could get on one of the rummy nose. Water Parameters: pH - my tap water comes out of the tap at 7 and ages to 8.2, this tank has Fluval Stratum which seems to drop pH to about 6.5. I change water straight out of the tap. Nitrates - tons of plants also in quarantine, nitrates are rock bottom... MAYBE "5" on the test strip this morning. Hardness - 18 degrees/320 ppm Nitrite - 0 Ammonia - 0 KH/Buffer - 16 degrees/285 ppm Water Temperature - 76 before this afternoon, now increased to 78 Thanks!

I've never had many danios over the years. But I know all of the ones that I had only knew one speed, full. 😄 Cool fish, I bet they're fun to watch.

I can't say I'm an experienced planted tank guy. But my plants are mostly alive and GH = 18 degrees, KH =16 degrees out of the tap. Like someone stated above PPM/17.8 = Degrees*17.8 = PPM Or you can dump it in here: https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/hardness/hardness.htm

Try using PayPal? Otherwise call your bank or card issuer. I've had my bank hold payment for all sorts of weird stuff. I couldn't buy anything from a UK company for awhile a few years ago. I was buying used books and if I did that my bank would cancel and I would have to call them and have them temporarily allow purchases.

I really like matte black paint so far. 15-20 years ago I always used black posterboard type material and it was always getting a little wet/ruined. I never thought to paint them. I just bought a 75 gallon and the previous owner had already put a coat of black paint on it (but hadn't filled the tank yet). I put another couple of coats on it and, unfortunately, at some angles there's like 'bubbles' between paint and glass. It's not super noticeable, but it's going to bug me "forever", nut sure if his first coat wasn't great or maybe our two paints weren't compatible or something. The blackout film is an interesting option, I bet that works pretty well.

Ich looked worse last night, much better this morning. Another WC and Ich-X dose. Not sure if this is particularly hard on corys. Had a dead one this morning (figured he would die eventually as he looked rough coming from store). Hopefully this is behind me here in a few days.

Says every 24 at least or sooner. 12 hours works pretty well for me, I can do a quick change in the morning and redose. Would anyone suggest that or just wait 24?

Are these shipping prices for real? Just out of curiosity I plopped 20 cardinal tetras in cart and shipping was only $13? That hardly seems possible!

I don't mean to derail the thread, but I've read in other places that high concentrations of these things are adverse to bacteria growth (basically poisoning the ability of the bacteria to multiply and in some cases kill them). Can anyone comment on that being true and/or if that might be the case here?

I'm not sure the canisters are "better" in a way we'd traditionally think of them. But they certainly have a lot of space for biological media (in my opinion). And because of that I'd imagine they can handle converting a lot of waste into nitrates, but I really wonder how much is necessary. The filter is of unknown age. Honestly, if I'd have known it would be a headache I would have just bought something else. At this point I'd just bought spares of things if I end up buying another of the same. I would guess that the seal hasn't been replaced and, honestly, it might have sat for years for all I know. So the seal could be dry it just "feels" good to me but it isn't. The first time I put it into service it didn't leak. But maybe it was a little brittle and there's some damage now. *shrug* I'll eventually get it sorted out (or replaced). 🙂

I think Amazon has them cheapest. That said, you can do water changes without a python. If you for some reason absolutely had to have a pump to do it, you could get a bilge pump from Walmart (I think most of them carry one, or at least they do around here, but we live basically on the Mississippi River). You'd need to power it with 12V DC (car battery). I *think* Python connections are just standard hose connections, so if all you need is 50 feet of hose, you can probably find that somewhere easy to pick up today.

You know, I keep telling myself that. The thing is... bees really take care of themselves in most all of the most important ways. Discus do the same (in nature). Now if I brought a colony of bees into, say, a large building and was going to get them to grow and thrive like that, I think they'd be very difficult to keep. Maybe once I get discus I'll realize it wasn't quite such a big deal after all. 😄

I'm trying to suss out what advice is "idealism" and what is hearsay... the fact that discus have been "kept" in probably just about any water is probably true. I'm trying to discern the sweet spot and how big it is. I'm usually pretty good at doing that. It's a lot easier being successful if you start pretty close to dead center of that sweet spot instead of sitting right on the fringe where maybe it's not the pH that kills your discus, but it's a bacterial infection that would normally have been benign @ ~7 pH, but thrives at 8 (totally made up example, but I know acidity typically helps limit bacterial growth). When you're on the edge it's easy to get pushed off and have no idea what actually caused the issue. I also keep about 40 honey bee colonies and graft/raise all of my own queen bees. So I understand nuance and trial/error. I was originally thinking about a sump, but I don't think that's in the cards where the tank is at (living room). I have thought about moving it to the basement, but our basement is just and unfinished cement room and I do not care to spend much time down there. No one would see the fish unless purposefully going to do so and that defeats the whole purpose, really. If I were breeding them or something that would be a different case. Regarding water changes, the draining of water will be no big deal... laundry sink and I'm going to plumb my python so that it's more or less permanently installed and all I have to do is screw in my gravel vac 'pig tail' and open a valve, start the siphon, and go. Filling will be more complicated as I'll have to pump the RO water out of storage (big garbage can) in the basement and up into the tank. I think that I can probably plumb most of that part in so just go downstairs, start the pump, and do some valve line-up changes and pump the water back in. In my head it's all relatively uncomplicated. Once I start thinking it through more I might find that it's a big pain. We have a home water softener (which is just an ion exchanging resin that replaces minerals with sodium). I'm not sure if that would be better water to run through the RO or if I should just do the regular tap water. Our tap water is something like 600 ppm and the 'softened water' is more like 1100 ppm. My understanding is that it takes roughly 2 sodium ions to replace each one removed, so that checks out if that's in fact true.

You can get them from Discus Hans (Stendker Discus imported to the US). But even Stendker says that above 8 pH, they're not well and at 8.5, they die. I've been nerding out trying to come up with a way. It's going to require RO and I think I've been slowly coming to that conclusion. I don't mind that... I don't think... I can set something up easily enough and have the storage capacity. I've been kicking around putting one in just for our drinking water, actually. I have absolutely zero desire to even attempt doing any of the other ways of lowering pH. But I think doing RO is reasonable and would be stable once I figure out "the mix". Meaning 30 gallons of RO to 5 gallons of tap (to make sure there's minerals). Lots of thinking to do and still very much in the planning stage. Originally I was thinking 4-6 weeks before I would be ready for discus, but I just keep digging. No rush, I've been wanting to keep them for 15-20 years... what's another six months? 🙂

Long term, discus. But it's not like their on order or in quarantine. Have wanted to keep them and kept running into this wall (our tap water is VERY hard. I never much cared about water parameters other than ammonia/nitrite/nitrate when I was fishkeeping more heavily years ago (mostly oscars, livebearers, and african cichlids). Kept hitting this "wall" because I have always been really nervous about our tap water here with hardness and pH. That's a different discussion (the discus), thanks for your help everyone! Just wanted a sanity check. Yep, not chasing anything, but maybe slowly coming to the realization that discus aren't going to work for me without a lot of dinking around with water.

I've got two gaskets on the way. Plumber's grease is silicone grease (so far as I know).

The blue is the "normal range" pH test and the browner one is the "high range" pH test. What do you mean it's high? I mean, it is... it's off range for that test. Both are testing the same water. To me it looks like 8.0, right? There's no fish in this tank, it's just tap water that's been circulating in my new 75. The water in my other tank has Fluval Stratum and it's at 6.x.

Thanks 🙂 Was planning on doing vaseline only as something to try with this gasket I am replacing. But am getting plumbers grease today when I go to the hardware store so will not bother with the vaseline at all. Also found a video of someone loosening some screws at SunSun's recommendation, so will try that tonight probably.