nabokovfan87

Hydrogen peroxide will attack anything on the filter, good or bad. It's an oxidizer. That being said, if you have a secondary filtration or other methods to keep the tank cycled, it should be safe to pull the sponge, treat it, and then add it back to the tank.

With acrylic you can only polish out so many scratches before it gets too thin. Just something to keep in mind. There are likely a ton of videos or articles out there with people who have done it a few times and would be able to determine where that line is. 55G tank on sale wouldn't be that expensive, but I hear you. You can also look into the 60B or 75G if the stand situation makes sense. They have lids out of polycarbonate as well as mesh / net lids. You can always just clean it and let it sit until you're ready to take up the repair tasks or other things with the stand.

On the last day of treatment (day 6 I think) you dose the meds and then give it 24 hours. You would want to go ahead and then do a water change. I normally do 30-50% and then that will cut the salt level back as well as the med removal. Once you're done with that, 24 hours later you'll be doing another water change and then dose in meds again. You can also add in more salt at this point. That gets you through to the two rounds of treatment. And then you'd clear things out with carbon and water changes (doing both is absolutely fine). You can add in stability or another bacterial starter. Fritz Zyme 7 is another one. I've use the aqueon and tetra ones as well. There is ammo is ammonia going on, but the salt in there also helps to counter that. Adding in (or having on hand when the salt goes away) that Bacteria would be a good idea to boost back up the filtration. Yep! So hopefully we see the fish perk up and the colors come back as well. The body turning black like that can be a sign of an external protozoan parasite and so that's the next hurdle if if doesn't recover with salt alone.

Happy to help! Seriously. If you know how to get rid of BBA... I'm all ears. 😂

You can use pinsettes and hand feed too! Fish for thought on YouTube has some videos on doing this, but it's a pretty common technique. Glad to hear about the improvement! 💪

A lot of barbs tend to need long tanks because of the activeness and swimming back and forth a lot, just a note. I wouldn't put anything bigger than a cherry barb in a 20g/29g aquarium. If possible, in the future try to get a 4' long aquarium and you'll see some really awesome barb behavior. What goes well with barbs is going to be Rasbora or danio species.

I had some of that moonlight / very fine sand and I felt so bad for Riddick. It was the sand the store had in a small bag so it was what I used. Swear that fish had a sand beard for a few months until I was sure it wasn't ich. I still, to this day, need to go get a bag of sand from the shop, but yeah. Is the fist still being vertical or just sort of hanging around near the top? Secondarily, if need be, do you have a breeder box or something if you need to use that and keep the fish towards the surface of the water? (I don't think you do, but just trying to cover all the bases.

Right alongside there, check out the book walden as well as the book wild. There is also a movie with Reese Witherspoon for the latter, wild. It's so well done. Into the wild is a great film, absolutely.

I found that one as someone had recommended it for their top fin 40b tank. Most glass lids come with a rear trim that you can cut or remove as you need to. As long as the left to right fits, there's a lot of other ways to modify the front to back... without touching the glass itself.

Interesting! I always have to do a double take when I see KH at a certain point and then I see the PH really high. Let's start with an off-gas test to get an idea of where things should be for PH-GH-KH and then try to map out a plan going forward. I don't think you need to be using buffers for KH at all! Which does help with PH swings and stability, and algae. Off-Gas testing: -Take a sample of water from the tap where you get water for water changes and test the 3 parameters right away. -Take that same sample of water and aerate it for 24 hours with an airstone and then retest everything. -Test the tank and compare those results to the above 2. Ideally, test #2 and #3 are very similar. That would indicate you're doing enough water changes, enough volume is being changed, and your maintenance is on point. If you have something like african cichlid substrate, planted/active substrate, seiryu stones, or a lot of wood then you should see the parameters in the tank evolve over time. Organics and fish waste use up the KH, plants also affect that, and things like the minerals in the hardscape or substrate would increase it. While we're doing those tests, let's start here.... this video really helped me to understand my planted tank better and they do have some great information for keeping a planted tank!

Yes I would follow up with the treatment. Are you also using aquarium salt or able to get some? You can see the fins growing on the bottom, so the signs are good.

Hm... tough to say what it could be. sand and other things can stick to them for an extended period. Might be nothing.

Strikingly beautiful. Nice photo!

There was someone recently who had a male ram go between a few females. There was a bit more of a complexity to the setup, but I'll try to find the thread. As a sidenote, here is another thread / journal that may be of interest and able to help out with some of your questions:

https://clideo.com/cut-video The above is an online only tool if you need to edit without a high end machine. Very limited in ability and going to be a little delayed, but it totally works! The other one that a lot of people use for a desktop/laptop is called davinci resolve and it does have a free version available. Windows has a "new one" in terms of the built in video editor with a good amount of features. It doesn't have everything, so you may have to toss it in movie maker for some tasks.

I think my choice for this question would be a movie that I tend to watch at least once a year, Collateral Beauty. It's about quite a few serious and heavy topics, but it's a story told in a very good way.

For any active infection, you want to follow the directions on the box. I understand entirely the confusion and it seems to happen from time to time. Cory did make an updated video and clarified this point. As a sidenote / clarification, when you're treating for parasites you want to have multiple rounds of treatment. Meaning, 4-6 weeks is normal. This is because of the lifecycle of the parasite. You want to have your initial treatment kill the parasites that are beyond the egg stage, then as the eggs hatch your further treatments will kill those off, and finally you have one last treatment to make sure you really are clear of the parasites long term. Here is Cory's video on that topic, but there's other great resources on the forums when it comes towards disease treatment!

Well... let's put it this way. Is the goal to have a rack of tanks (20H or 20L) or is the goal to have maybe 2 tanks, but one of them be really awesome? I would lean towards either a 60b (4 foot long), 40b (3 foot long). or 30long (2 foot long) would be nice for a more visual centerpiece in the room because of the ability to have a really beautiful setup with plants, depth, hardscape, and SO approval (and interest). If you just want to give this particular fish more room then something like Irene's experiences with them would be a great resource. I'll grab the link and attach that video here. I do believe she had a 20L setup, but the video can confirm the details for us! Anything for me is much better than a 10G just because my own hands working in the tank, and needing to be able to get the siphon around things without clanking too much into the walls. 20L is a really nice size tank, 20H is as well. Any time you want to get something bigger than a 10, the real question is about the stand and the visual purpose for the tank.

We'll have to see what the new test results are. If you still have the existing kit, did you happen to test your tapwater or dilute the tank water and try to re-test?

4-8 is about the range of light I mess with in my tanks. Intensity and duration are the two variables I try to limit as much as I can because for whatever reason I have the luck of dealing with one of the most resilient strains of staghorn and BBA in my tanks for years now. I don't say that as a badge of honor thing, but just as a means of... I'm really frustrated by it! I do have an algae thread in my links in my signature that have thoughts along that journey on dealing with algae. Caveat aside, more than 8 hours and I really run into an issue. Ticking the light up slightly as well and it's like the tank goes a bit crazy on me really fast.... taking weeks to remove the algae I just introduced. By the initial title you posted I wanted to ask about the balance of the tank in terms of minerals. The rule of thumb is usually that you want GH to be higher than KH. Let's start there. What is your GH and what is your KH. Over time the plants pull from that GH/KH and you'll do your maintenance to replace it. If you don't then you have what is called old tank syndrome set in. Essentially, not enough of the things building up being removed and not enough of the things being used added back in. Although it might be frustrating at times, the fun thing is that there is always something to learn. Let's dive in and see what makes sense for further discovery. Yep... I have been there! I am dealing with this right now with my Staurogyne Repens and it's just been an issue for months where I have growth, but the plant isn't thriving much at all. Algae takes hold, especially bba, on dying parts of the plant. The plant then uses the resources from those areas and leaves to feed new growth and try to outlast the algae. Then the algae grows or triggers some spores and the cycle continues again. One of the best things to do is increase plant mass by propagating them out. Using root tabs may be literally all you have to do here to "perk up" the plants right now. Checking the above parameters as well as your maintenance schedule is also just a good place to start. Please feel free to ask the questions you might be without fear of sounding new to the hobby. We all want you to thrive and you might just get to see some of the awesome aquascapers we have here!

It may have not been anything to do with the meds, but just a factor of so much going on and one thing added to another. I haven't brought in corydoras in a while, but every single time I do I have a lot of losses. It's potentially the east --> west coast journey. I just am unsure why and I know that my own experience was limited at the times when I brought them in. I knew how to acclimate, I did all of the right things, but it wasn't something I've done a dozen or three dozen times. What I am much better at these days is just understanding the systematic approach of stress. Something as simple as temperature leads to stress, travel leads to stress, water parameters changing from the tank to a bag to a new tank add to stress, and any sort of stress can cause issues. Minimizing that stress or just giving them time to recover from it can be critical. A lot of shops and hobbyists might get a fish to their tank safely, but I am going to bet that it does happen where the first 48-72 hours is critical to success long term. Fingers crossed and knock on wood. Let's hope that we have an idea of what's going on and just monitor the situation moving forward.

Following the water change and water testing, then decide on salt. Essentially, you'd want to verify if it's an ammonia issue and go from there. Because of the plants, avoiding salt is best, but a low dose of salt should be ok. I've used aquarium salt, 1 tbsp per 5 for shrimp and they were ok with it. Lower the dose the better though. She knows it too! 😂

Looks like this might be the go-to: "The 36 in. x 18 in. Marineland Perfecto Glass canopy measures 34.75 in. x 16.75 in" SKU: 245172 Manufacturer: Marineland MPN: 666872

Interesting. The aqueon version is 35.2" wide, so it'd be slightly too wide then. In terms of fit what was the issue with the topfin one, side to side or front to back?