IHOctopus

I have a ~150 gal tank that I maintain at work. Inhabitants are hatchets, bloodfin tetras, denison barbs, SAEs, yoyo loaches, and harlequin rasboras. 77C (no heater), nitrate=50, nitrite=0, hardness over 300, buffer=40, pH 7. Test strip pic attached. I change ~35% water every 2 weeks. No new fish added this year. A few weeks ago I noticed one hatchet had a swollen lower jaw, but it was still eating and acting fine. Last week the scales on the face were gone, and the jaw was red and swollen. (Did not look like fungus.) I placed him in a quarantine tank and treated with salt ("level two" dose) and one dose of erythromycin. This is a picture of him after 1 week of treatment. Jaw is no longer red, but still swollen. Today I noticed the bloodfin tetras are now showing similar symptoms. Lower jaws are swollen so the mouth doesnt close. Those tetras also have redness around the gills. I tried catching them out, but they were too fast and the tank too big. Pic of them hiding in the left corner. I did a 50% water change and added erythromycin. I didn't want to add salt because of the plants. Anyone know what this is? And should I be combining it with another med? When you guys do erythromycin, do you dose daily like the box instructs?

Thanks for everyone's input! Unfortunately my qt tank is temporary and therefore not seasoned, so no grazing on biofilm for my little guy. He hides behind the heater most of the time (he has rejected the pvc caves I provided) but does come out when he thinks nobody is around. If I still don't see him eating tomorrow I'll start pulling stones from my display tank and put them in the qt tank for grazing. They have some algae growing on them. Has anybody had to use meds on a hill stream loach? Every source online says they are very sensitive.

I picked up a reticulated hillstream loach from my LFS 2 days ago and placed it in a quarantine tank with no meds. It looks healthy but I'm concerned that I haven't seen it eat. I tried algae wafers, repashy on a rock, and live baby brine. Maybe it eats at night and I'm not seeing it? My plan was to observe in quarantine without meds for a month before adding it to the display tank because I heard these guys are sensitive to meds. (Plenty of algae to eat in the display tank!) Would you guys suggest I try medicating it so I can hurry up and add it to the display tank? Or keep doing what I'm doing? It's my first hillstream!

Yes, I had my eye on Greg Sage's line! They are stunners. Thanks for the info. I'm really torn between odessa barbs or a huge school of active schoolers, like danio kyathit. It will take me a while to set up the tank, so I have plenty of time to see where I land.

@Mynameisnobody Can I ask you a few question on Odessa barbs since you say you've kept them? Did you find them to be a schooling or shoaling fish? And would you say they like flow or fairly still water? I'm stocking a new stream-style scape with schooling fish, and would love to add some Odessas.

Thank you so much!

Hello, Does remember the name/brand of the magnetic algae scraper Cory showed in one of his videos? (I believe he was using it on Ladybird's tank.) I take care of an acrylic office tank that has about 1 inch thick walls, and the regular Magfloats don't do anything for it.

The saga of "Bendy Barb" has ended and I want to leave a record here just in case anybody else wants to do a deep dive in the archives. I netted out the fish shortly after my post and placed it in a hospital tank. I figured one of two things could be wrong. First, it could be a spine injury, in which case I can't do anything for the fish. Second, it could be some kind of disease, which I could try to treat. (Swim bladder issues, fishy tb, who knows??) So I tried the following: I started with the hospital tank set at 80 F with salt and maracyn. After finishing the antibiotic treatment I did not observe any changes. Barb just stayed in the PVC pipes all day, which she used for buoyancy control. I kept her in the hospital tank with salt and heat turned up and looked for other options. A post on the fish vet facebook group got one response. First, the vet mentioned that vitamin C deficiency could case the S shape. (Fish scurvy?) I check the food I was using and it was embarrassingly old, so I bought new high quality pellets with vitamin c on the ingredient list. I counted out a few every night and threw them in the tank. They were gone the next morning so I knew Barb was eating. After 4 weeks I still had not seen any changes. The other thing the facebook vet mentioned was to try a stronger antibiotic. He said that the over the counter stuff was not very strong, and he used a stronger broad spectrum one in some cases. Here is the catch; the antibiotic he uses is injected into muscle. Its application is usually in expensive koi with much larger muscles, so this would be very difficult on Barb. Reconstituting the tiny dose may also create issues. Either way, the vet said the treatment only works half the time. At this point barb had little control of her movements. She jerked around frantically a few times per day and hid in her PVC tubes the rest of the time. It was either treat or euthanize. I decided to order the medication and perform the injection. She did survive the initial injection, but was dead the next morning. I really really really wanted to x-ray her spine after she passed, but the remains had already been disposed of before I had the chance. Which is a shame, it would have confirmed my hypothesis that this was a spine injury of some sort. So that's the story of Barb. She lived in a huge tank in my office lobby and the whole team was rooting for her. Her fishy friends miss her too.

I have 3: -150 gallon at the office -2.5 gallon desk tank at the office -55 gallon community at home I'm planning my second tank for my home, a 75 g river setup

That's actually the only one I've looked at, they do seem to be sold out of a lot of fish.

Hello, I've never ordered fish through the mail, and was wondering what you guys recommend as far as reputable online retailers. My LFS has a really small selection, and I'd like to branch out.

Oops, I'm sorry. I meant 50 ppm nitrate and 0 ppm nitrite. Next time I take my tank apart I'll attempt to catch the barb and quarantine it. Unfortunately last time I tried to catch a barb, I nearly destroyed my tank and didn't actually catch anyone.

I have a tank with 6 denison barbs. For maybe the last month, 1 has been hiding behind in the hardscape. I saw it maybe 2 weeks ago and it was slighty pale, and swam with a little funny wiggle. I never see it coming out to eat. Well I did some tank maintenance this weekend and saw it again; it looked much worse. It's much paler than the other barbs and swims with an "S" curve. I've had these barbs for 6 months and it's the only one doing that. I'm new to fish diseases. Is this something that can be treated, or is it just going to get progressively worse? I was able to take pics with it next to healthy barbs. Parameters are. pH= 7.5-6.6 (depending on time of day with CO2 injection), ammonia= 0, nitrate= 0, nitrite= 50, temp= 78.

Odd Duck, the idea to drain the water came from multiple other forums and videos that showed this kind of treatment during water changes, since it exposes affected leaves and makes them easier to treat. (It was in Irene's BBA video as well.) However you make a very good point that I didn't consider; you have to account for the decreased water volume when calculating how much H2O2 that can be used. And you're right, I won't be making that mistake again. I think for now I'll stick to just trimming off affected leaves.

Well @nabokovfan87 it didn't go well and I'm gutted. This is my first major booboo as a beginner in the hobby. Here's what happened: I drained half the water and cut the lights and filters. Then I squirted hydrogen peroxide on the affected leaves with a syringe. I waited 20 min and filled it back up and turned everything back on. Within 30 minutes I lost my entire school of Espei and everyone else was gasping at the surface. I immediately check the pH and see it's above the 8.8 limit of my test kit. (Tank is usually at 6.6 due to the aquasoil I have in my tank.) I begin adding small increments of vinegar until it's back at 6.6 and the fish seem stable. 24 hours later I get a bacteria bloom and my fish start gasping for air again. I tested the water: ammonia is 0, pH is 6.6, nitrite is 0.15ish. I transferred all the poor fish to a hospital tank. So far all my amano shrimp have died as well as 2 congo tetras. The 6 corydoras, 6 glowlight tetras, and apisto look rough, but hanging on. The tank is still cloudy with the same parameters as the day before. I know H2O2 dissociates into H2O and a free O. Since my tank is normally acidic, maybe the extra free oxygen bonded with the excess of H+ to form OH-, and that swung the pH to very basic, which damaged the fish gills and killed off beneficial bacteria? Or is there another component I'm overlooking? Why did the fish seem to recover for a day and then declined again. Either way, in retrospect I'm certain I underestimated how much hydrogen peroxide I had used total. I do hesitate to share any of this because of how guilty I feel, but feel like I won't learn anything if I don't....

Thanks @Odd Duck, I'll try the peroxide trick today! And thanks for the cropping tip, I had no idea why my pic kept getting flipped but it was very frustrating. @lefty o I heard that blue lights can cause algae growth if left on all the time. Are you saying that just having blue in the spectrum during the photo period also contributes to algae growth?

A few weeks ago I started noticing black beard algae beginning to grow on some of my plants. I have no idea where it came from since I hadn't introduced anything new in a while. It's not that bad yet (see first two pics) but I want to keep it from spreading. I have a low tech planted tank that's about 4 months old. I run a Fluval 3.0 light with a very modest lighting schedule. (Pic attached) My nitrates are consistently around 5 and pH 6.6. The algae is popping up mainly on the plants on the left side, mostly amazon swords and crypts. I added a pic of my whole tank just for reference. Here is what I have done: 1. I used to have an in-tank filter top left corner. Even on the lowest setting, the flow was fairly high and the output was located about half way down the tank. I was worried that the flow was what caused the BBA, so I swapped it for a sponge filter. 2. I started dosing easy green. Maybe my plants are lacking some nutrient which prevented them from growing, meaning the BBA had an opportunity to grow. 3. I treated a few times with excel, both in the water column and on the leaves. But I haven't seen and positive changes. Any other suggestions to try for now? I generally don't do large/frequent water changes since my parameters have been really good, but I can try that as well.

I'm setting up a new 55 gallon planted tank. I bought a bunch of seriyu stone for decor, but I'm having second thoughts. We have very high pH water coming out of our taps here (it maxes out my API test kit at 8.8). I know seriyu is supposed to raise pH.... Side note: I do have a small planted shrimp tank and the aquasiol manages to buffer the water down to 6.8. But I also know that the buffering capacity of aquasiol diminishes over time. So should I find a different stone option that wouldn't alter the pH, or hope that the aquasiol helps keep it under control?