nabokovfan87

Sorry, just now seeing this. I try to keep nitrates below 10. With "heavy feeding" they usually end up 20-40 on any given week depending how heavy I feed. I seriously try to stay below 20, but I'm not very specific with it. They have definitely seen high nitrates before. Adding oxygen, salt (1/2 cup per 10G), etc. is usually what they like and should respond to. Lower temps, etc. They've been treated recently with the erythromycin, salt, ich-x, paracleanse. I am pretty sure they had prazipro as well because of all that worm stuff I had going on. As far as how, I'm guessing it's just the bare bottom tank. It might be carryover from the BDBS issues I had or shipping. It happens, but I'm sure the little one will pull through. 🙂 Is there any way to drop PH or not easily? I don't think they've seen PH that high for an extended period. 7.4 yeah, but not ~8. 7.6-7.8 they have seen for a few days, but not constant. I don't know if that helps you navigate the fungus stuff, but I wanted to mention it as a precaution. They were at 76 pretty much all summer so they've been acclimated to the warmer stuff this year. Right now my tanks are set to 71. It got chilly, so it was in the 60's for a day (silly me forgot to turn the heater back on). Just not used to having them back in, but no issues in the tank. *Knocks on wood* That's unfortunate!!! I usually resort to flooding a bucket or letting the stinkin' siphon hose slip out and just stare at while I try to figure out how on earth to stop it. Gallons of water on the floor this week. Hopefully yours wasn't that bad.

Are you planning to treat with Expel-P or just Paracleanse? If an issue pops up are you fine treating the main tank with Ich-X, Paracleanse, and/or Expel-P or is the volume of water too large? I think you can modify the issue by adding "something" to the container to allow them to break line of sight more. It might literally just be stacks of sponge or rocks or wood, but something you can clean if need be that suits the QT tank. In my view, that's how I would handle it, but I totally understand the concern. Seeing ripped fins and the aggression, the go to for me is to change the scape to reset boundaries.

Can you elaborate on this? I am trying to figure if I should add some or not.

I definitely wouldn't feed for 3-4 days, more if the fish have been well fed. Siphon it lightly daily to remove the big chunks of stuff. Then you just change water daily or every other day until you're happy with it. 50% is recommended, I've gone as high as 75-90% in emergency situations.

Is the poop normal or weird colored? It might be a sign of internal parasites.

A barb pond is literally one of the things I wish I could share with people. They are the worlds most fun fish at times. They are really nice, I'm so glad you're enjoying them! Mix up some varieties or check out newer versions to see which one you like!

What do they look like!!?!??

I just use my phone 🙂 The "timelapse part" means it's either sped up or just silent to music and uploaded directly.

nooooooooo! LOL. I can't ever get these fish to spawn regularly, so hopefully not!!! I am too. And it's all new and learning. Last time I got two fry by doing nothing, so let's hope we can do better than that!

I tossed it in my journal (link in sig) it's my second spawn (first since joining the forums here) of my Black Corydoras. They like winder I guess! LOL. Ask me how I know they like cold water more than warm.... cause when I first got them I literally had no decent information on parameters and just knew they were rare, assuming wild caught.

dean said he does his until he sees fry and then gets it out of the water. Sometimes they do it because they see food and don't process it as their own. Sometimes they do it out of fear (like a mouth brooder trying to keep them in, but they aren't one). So having low stress surroundings is key for some female fish. That being said, sometimes it just takes a lot of messing it up until the parents learn to care for it themselves. I'll mention him again, but Dean went over this a lot when he was showing how he does his angels. He talks about the struggle Cory had with the parent's caring for the fry and then discussing the topic above. Hopefully that helps. I'm so excited for you! I just got my first eggs this week too. Ironic because I could've sworn (or had the impression) you've been breeding and doing the big fish rack stuff for a while and you always have cool stuff!

Literally one of the most amazing things. Maybe one day we get a co-op video like this with Dean showing all of his egg tips!?!?!?!?!? From egg to fry, literally, in a video with all the fascinating slow parts. Very cool of you to share this. Thank you!

Whatever you're feeding now, cut it in half. Yep! Totally would. I had this happen in one of my tanks. I literally just changed the type of food and water got more cloudy for about a month. It is just because of increased waste and likely just the result of the type of filtration as well (some filters pull stuff, some pull course items, some focus on fine, etc. Cloudy water is usually never an issue, just not pleasing to the eye. ALRIGHT so.... The fun side of shrimp is they will graze and eat off of surfaces. So you can focus on (not feeding) and they will graze more. that is their natural behavior. So if you don't see them grazing on plants, wood, rocks, and things that you'd expect them to, then you're just feeding a bit too much. You can also have "heavy days" where say on Fridays they get a little extra shrimp sticks or some repashy in whatever amount and they graze on that all day long. Having days like that where they can sort of go nuts will also help with breeding behavior because they get into a cycle. (Don't quote me on that as a scientific fact or anything, but that's been the usual experience for me). Shrimp can be pretty non-demanding. They can get away with a day off here and there and it's actually good for them because they clean the tank that way and the stuff they eat when they graze isn't something that comes from a food bottle. aufwuchs, and that stuff really helps with their health and stability long term. Once you get enough of a group, there's times when you feed some of them won't even bother because they just keep grazing and doing their own thing. All normal. Oh yes. This is the norm. @Minanora has her shrimp that takes giant algae cookie snacks and runs to hide with them. Shrimp are very brave when food hits. Then they run to their hides and gorge.

Agreed. If you can, try to. You'll LITERALLY NEVER have a better deal.

It's the best one too! 😞 you can absolutely say no and that's 100% fine. Have you ever done a timelapse or anything of planting a tank? Like I said, you're amazing at this stuff and I know I would be in awe. Others might really love that chance to see you do your thing too!!! Oh my favorite 🙂

yeah, that's where I'm at right now. I want to give it at least a little bit more time and see what it looks like. I wish I could flatten out the clump of eggs there, but it wafts around in the container and it has a filter so there's not a lot I can do. If something shows fungus I have the hang on breeder box I can move it to and then treat that directly using dean's method. Even the ones that are clear, I can see internally, but again... so small that it's very difficult. One of the females, her first time laying which explains a lot of the variation.

you should be fine to use maracyn, maracyn 2, or kanaplex (either one) with jungle fungus. If there's a concern you would just stagger treatments. But, given the severity here time is of the essence and you treat with both (fungal+antibacterial) due to secondary diseases appearing up. Something like when you heal a bacterial issue, then you have an open would that results in fungal issues. Jungle Fizz Tabs: Maracyn/API Erythromycin: Maracyn 2: Kanaplex: Colu has tested, used, and helped many people here with the Kanaplex + Jungle fizz tabs, so that's definitely the safest route to go right now. As this thing is fighting the meds you may find that others work to finish it off and help the fish fully recover. It's good you have them on hand, but I totally understand the frustration of not having the "right one" so to speak.

After 24 hours:

First 24 hours, this is what they look like. From what I know, the fully cloudy eggs I need to remove as well as fully translucent eggs (nothing inside the clear shell) Does the setting look acceptable for the eggs or should I turn it up?

They are cleaning @Chick-In-Of-TheSeaLLol I could make a joke about how my shrimp are never on the plants because of the algae, but yeah. Makes me sad. 😞

Are you treating currently with any meds? I'll tag @Colui A lot of the questions asked are the type of thing where one med mentioned might not do anything against what you have going on.

I have it, but not using it on the tank. There was a suggestion to just take the tumbler and do a dip/bath with it if I need to. We'll see how it goes. First time with one of these so it's all new to me. I have read and heard about long term issues with methylene blue. It's in Ich-X so I'm not really that concerned. Day 1. So we'll see how things look and play it by ear.

You might also get things back to sorts with water changes. Depending what "normal" is for nitrates I would do your water changes often (daily or every other day) until you have that value where you want it. That's normally just how I handle it when I have a cycle issue. That being said, I don't think your tank is out of wack or has a cycle crash. You probably just had slightly more food and that produced the excess readings. It'll balance out shortly, but that explains just about everything including the PH crash. If you need it for stability, I use seachem alkalinity buffer. I use a 1/8 tsp scoop and 2 scoops per 5G to gently buffer my KH from 4 up to 6. Crushed coral is definitely the preferred method, but in this tank I didn't know I needed it until I had the black substrate down on the bottom.

Oh yeah... This definitely happens. Poor little fish. It's always best to open / move slow and give the fish a chance to notice if they are jumpy / sensitive. Very sorry this happened! I was watching the stuff in my tank today and I opened the door and was just looking, realized they stopped because I was above the tank and big / scary looking. Once I sat on the floor they went back to normal. But, I ended up just opening the door really slow for the rest of the day to try not to disturb them too much entering the room. One of the most common things is fish jumping or hitting the lid and this type of injury happening. I was reading a study (a legit design study and scientific series of documents on the topic) about fish and sound pollution. Because of lateral lines and other senses the fish have, it very well could've been as simple as the large disturbance on the water surface moving through the tank and it scared the fish. It happens, unfortunately. It sounds like the fish is ok, thankfully 🙂 .

There's a pic way back in the thread but I'll re-post. At first they are clear! After a few weeks this is what they look like: Squint and it'll make sense 😂 Here is someone much better than me with them who has them a bit younger.