nabokovfan87

Will they!? I have no idea.

I'd definitely check those out, med trio + salt is what a lot of us have on hand for QT and treatment.

I've seen it been done, never done it myself. There's a few videos on youtube for it as well. I believe King of DIY has one, but could be a few others that did the methodology as well.

Snails....

Literally about to do this in both my tanks with the floaters I'm tired of gluing over and over. If you're looking to add verticality to your tank, I'd recommend letting the Bacopa Caroliniana that you have grow a bit further, it will get tall pretty easily. As well as Vallisneria and Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus. you can also let some of your stem plants just float.

Good to see things getting better. Just imagine that thing with a ton of Vallisnaria.

The best thing I've found to clean glass is a rubberlip pleco. You can get a brisstlenose as well, but I think the first one does a lot better at cleaning glass.

If you look up the pondguru, he has something similar. Essentially in EU I believe, it's much more common to have a gel type (bacteria ball) starters. this is what I assume that product is as well. Across the pond we mostly use liquids, but it's definitely possible to get both on either side. They are supposed to work well because they dissolve slowly and give the bacteria time to find a home on the media over a period of time.

You can order the API stuff online if need be. I have had to do that before because the local store was just out of it. It's unfortunate. If you look at the ingredients for some of the things you photographed above it looks like they are both the same thing. Some of them have tea extracts in them, etc. Just keep an eye out on the use for what you're buying. Some things are used in addition to other things. Treating with one med might expose another issue. Etc. 100%

There are good test strips and bad test strips. There's also good storage and bad storage of test strips. I would recommend either Tetra test strips, API master kit (liquid tests), or the Aquarium Co-op test strips. They all work and they all give me accurate results. You might have an easier time reading one scale compared to the other, but you're going to pay a lot more for the Tetra/API tests compared to ACO strips because they want you to want to actually test your water! Strips are easier for me because they take less time, and because there is less user error (prior to trying to read results). Again, I've had no issues with anything mentioned above.

There is good news in that. If the tank is doing ok. Fish are stable. I don't mind 50% WC. If they are having issues, I'd stick to daily 30%. Definitely try to let the tank cycle

Perfect Feeding is generally considered more effective. It also might be difficult because of the stress on the body right now. Being bloated, the usual recommendation is salt and to stop food.

Should be plenty, be sure to check the experiment section for my Tidal bypass stuff. Sounds fine. I was curious if it was a planted substrate and was leeching anything. Give the tank 2-3 days off of food. 25% or so WC twice a day instead of 50% once a day might be slightly easier on the fish. I would just do a sanity check and verify it's not coming from the tap. Good gravel vac and just try to find out what's holding all the waste.

29G might not have enough flow because of the height. On mine, I'm using a pretty beefy air pump to get enough flow. I run 2 sponges and 1 ziss bubble bio What kind of substrate?

Do you have anything else you can add? Even another sponge filter?

Filtration setup?

@Stephanie KWhat food do you have for your betta? I'm trying to think if there's something you could feed with less of a risk of causing more constipation / bloating. I think you'd be better off trying to let the salt do the work, dosing the tank with Maracyn as opposed to the food right now. I would additionally add Ich-X for fungal as well. I think it makes sense to try to give the fish 24-48 hours and check for improvements (if you decide to dose the tank itself). It's difficult because I don't know how much is remaining in the fish's body currently and it's going to make dosing correctly difficult. When you tried to feed the betta last, did he eat ok?

It definitely can/will spread.

I have this one. It's a pretty cool "coffee table" type of a book.

I would recommend checking things in AqAdvisor.

@Katherine It came up in another thread. This might be worth looking into. https://www.thesprucepets.com/dropsy-in-aquarium-fish-1381806

@Stephanie KI am trying to find some further information. Have you added salt? https://www.thesprucepets.com/dropsy-in-aquarium-fish-1381806

I'm going off of memory, but I think there can be bypass issues. A lot of it goes into how you pack it in there. I'll try to break down my methodology, but it's been a bit since I've had hands on time with this one. I do remember it because it was unique and I really enjoyed the filter. Flow enters into the media chamber from the blue side. The overflow/indicator section is the area circled in red. When The flow is restricted, the pool in that area rises and completed the circuit for the LED. The orange circle is this little notch for the cartridge that's generally pretty difficult to fill. Because of this you have an easier time for the water to bypass the media and access the majority of the output really quickly. Someone who feels like it could probably glue in a circular piece here with a flat side and try to close it off and force the water across the entire back of the HoB media chamber. A few notes from my use: 1. If you leave a gap on the back side (back wall) for water to flow across, this might increase the chance of the filter itself wanting to flow evenly. 2. I encourage foam to stick out of the water to make it easier to take out, and you have a much better time using this if your foam is one large piece. -There is room and the media chamber is pretty deep compared to a lot of other HoBs. 3. Because the pump is actually pretty decent, and you don't have to prime it, the flow is generally "good" which means it's important to have something to stop the sponge itself from moving around. If it's not really held in place or isn't a tight fit, it can just get pushed to the right by the water. This is the one I posted earlier, slightly modified: The diagram on the right is the view if you were facing the HoB. Essentially I would have either, the pink box (ceramic media) on the top of a piece of sponge or protected by it as best I could. I used AC55 parts I think for the majority of it, obviously size is going to depend on what you want/need. Either, fill it with sponge or fill it with sponge as best you can, but leave a gap for media somewhere. Depending on if there's a gap on the bottom or the rear is going to determine a best location for the media you choose. I would have a few different height sponges and I played around with what worked best. That's about what I can remember from experimenting with it. I did not have any severe bypass issues in this configuration.

Results of the first run. I did run it a bit "longer" than I'd like to, but so goes it. I am running crushed coral beyond the normal items in the basket. That being said, with the crushed coral there is always going to be "bypass" so to speak. The height of the water is just naturally above the basket itself. Given the hight of the handles (and I have broken one before trying to pull the basket out) that is a good potential point to have a safe tool change where you can add some use to the product. Something to consider if they do ever add a new one. A few other notes, I did verify two things I had tagged earlier as "design improvements" and they are both on the older version I do use. So I am going to edit the above to remove that information. (the hooks you'll see below was one of them, the other was the foam pieces inside the pump cavity) Here's what I saw pulling the foams. I did set them up for a 2nd run, and I did slightly lower the flow so that there is a longer period without bypass appearing. I am very encouraged seeing the flow on the sponge and on the media itself. This isn't the norm, which means some of these improvements are resulting in a positive change. It's definitely not perfect yet! You can see some "clean" blue sections. I would argue these are due to the high flow pushing the gunk internally through the sponge in those two regions. Top of the medium density sponge, some gunk seems to be here, but not more than normal. I was expecting more. We do see some muck a bit better here. There is a path we can see that shows the muck going vertically upward when installed into the filter. (Apologies if this doesn't make sense) The silicone seems to be holding on fine, again, very early results. This is where I am seeing bypass still. I don't know if this is "acceptable" or not, but it's something to keep an eye on. If the intake is resolved, it might not happen because there would be a prefilter sponge and some of the larger much would get caught before it gets to the basket. I may run a test with the modified intake, but I saw this and thought it would likely result in needing to seal the basket in those small cutouts. Again, the "majority" of the bypass is pretty easily seen at the top of the basket. We will see how things develop as more tests are performed. A good amount of muck on the first sponge We do see some muck on the 2nd sponge. Much more than before and the good news here is that you see it internally on the sponge pores, meaning that it's being pushed into the material and no longer just getting to this sponge and then bypassing elsewhere.

@JessLynne7h Here's the video from this afternoon. The sound is probably horrible because I'm using my phone, be sure to mute it! A lot of them end up underneath the wood. For every 5-8 that you see there's 1-2 near them that you don't hiding. I'll try to grab one at night.