nabokovfan87

TDS is not the end all be all for shrimp. TDS means "there's stuff in the water", so as plainly as possible... yes adding ferts adds things to the water, increasing TDS, but this is not an issue. Having your KH and GH at the right levels is important for shrimp. TDS is useful for determining if you have enough of the buffers dosed in the RO water once you have it dialed in for how much to add to said water. Basically: 1. Get your RO water 2. Add in a known amount of buffer 3. Measure KH/GH to verify it's acceptable. 4. Measure TDS. 5. In future you can just measure TDS.... This is because it's a very, very controlled situation where you have water with a TDS of 0 and you're specifically buffering it to a certain level without any outside variables. For shrimp, here's another AWESOME content creator. I highly encourage anyone with shrimp to check em out.

I use EG on my shrimp, yes it is safe to use. It's a bit of a falacy that copper in some ferts or food will cause issues with the shrimp. They need copper for proper bodily processes and if they don't have it, that leads to issues. Either way, EG doesn't have copper, so you're safe either way. A common technique from Flip is that if you're concerned at all to use half doses of meds or anything to see how the shrimp react.

Awesome. Set up a journal and be sure to take us along for all the fun aspects! It's nice to see the creative process. 🙂

I guess I have had some very well behaved plecos. 😂

Hey Jesse, welcome to the forums! When you're battling a disease for months... let's take a step back and review the entirety of what happened and lets go ahead and try to really understand what worked, what didn't, and why. Having the flukes on the fish is usually easy to spot, so maybe it's something that isn't flukes? PraziPro is one medication, but using paracleanse as well should cover flukes. You do need to have a repeated treatment over several doses and so perhaps that is where the issues lie? I wanted to ask if you've ever used salt before while treating for some of these external parasites. This is a video which discusses an external protozoan parasite that is found on some betta fish. It is indicative of a black region on the top of the head where the skin deteriorates. It's a very informative video, but I wanted to share it for the sake of potentially you're dealing with something like this in terms of external parasites. I would lean towards 2 weeks without meds, let the fish recover, and then start by using ich-x+salt as your main treatment for 1 week. This is a relatively mild treatment that works for a variety of external parasites. Salt dose would be 1 tbsp per 2 gallons. If you have plants, it might be best to remove the plants from the tank to be able to treat the entirety of the tank. It might be a good idea to get some metroplex on hand as well as the ich-x. I don't know if this qualifies as indicative of something like hole in the head disease forming. I don't know if that is a common thing in rams, but it can be common in cichlids. ( @Odd Duck @Colu might be able to clarify that point for us! ) The dots on the head remind me a bit of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

Agreed. They all look healthy and normal to me. I'll snap some pictures of mine to give you an idea of the variation I'm seeing. For measuring, this might help. It's what Odd Duck is speaking about.

Yeah, the algae sure is enjoying my improved methods and dosing the proper amount. 😂 Plants are still growing and doing ok, so we'll see! Today is shrimp day, anubias in there has perked up as well as the moss.

LOL. Sounds about right.

You right. I was thinking about this thing. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/replacement-air-filter-linear-piston-air-pump?_pos=2&_sid=b14e236aa&_ss=r

I assume it's due to cleaning the pipes and things being in the water or being released from said pipes. CC @Bentley Pascoe has some experience with this and @modified lung may be able to shed some light for us as well given their experience!

6.8 is near 7.0 and 7.0 would be "neutral" which isn't too acidic or to basic. Too acidic and you have erosion. I would think that your snail has calcium deficiencies. KH in the water, carbonate hardness, is the measure of calcium and magnesium in the water. Above 3 is generally "fine", with 4 being stable and optimal from what I have experienced. I hope that helps. My suggestion would be to feed a good snail food. @Chick-In-Of-TheSea has a rescue snail that might be of interest and help in this situation as well.

Salt is used for a variety of reasons, but think of it most plainly this way... There are organs in the fish used for osmoregulation (how much salt % is inside the fish vs outside the fish). This leads to energy being used for the sake of that process. Adding some salt to the water for a small amount of time can reduce stress. This does other things like thicken the water and it helps with gill function. Adding air to help circulate the water becomes important at that time. All of this is basically regardless of feeding the fish. If you're simply doing a QT, not medication, then you're safe to feed the fish. QT = monitoring the fish and not necessarily treating the fish. Here is a great resource on the topic as well as a brief explanation of the origin of the term.

To start, welcome to the forums and I just wanted to commend you on how wonderful and amazing your tank is. I love how you did the rock and the wood. It all works so well together! Given your filtration, I think the issue is just circulation. Anubias, plants in general, but especially epiphytes need some flow across the rhizome. You could have an issue just from the source of the anubias and the rot happening prior to your care. I would lean towards adding a skimmer to push flow across or changing up the filtration. As a sidenote, in future keep an eye out for this:

it doesn't sound ridiculous at all and might actually be beneficial for a sump use. It's a corner tank it looks like, marineland makes great quality stuff from the one I had and I love their black silicone! The "corners" of the tank would be perfect for inlet and outlet pipes and save you a ton of space. If you look up standard size mats and foams, plan the design around that, it wouldn't be too bad at all. The "back chamber" would be whatever is leftover and could be used to house excess media and act as a refugium, out of the way. If you can give me dimensions on things I can give you a general idea and I would love to see where you plan it out and do with it. Sounds like a fun project!

Agreed. More circulation moves more water along the bottom of the bottle, leading to more of the co2 being dissolved. (basically convection)

Can you show some photos of the group? Smaller could very likely just be a male, but I do have a similar thing in my tank where there are what seem to be "runts." I would think of them as corydoras that are last to get the meal or just slightly more timid than others. Having more cover might make them comfortable, but you could just as easy spread found around and try to target feed the smaller ones. Everything you're doing seems to be right, the fish looks fine, but if you're concerned just increase feeding. Feed 6 days a week with every other day having a night meal. (doesn't have to be heavy, but that gives the more timid ones a chance to feed while others sleep)

😂 This is kind of adorable but not fun when it happens every time. I wonder how the fish learned to do this! Might stop if it has a cave?

Might be a good time to ask, do you have a spare diaphragm? You can add a secondary one if you need to, but I would definitely lean towards a bleed valve type of setup if you do anything like that. We have to figure out how to engineer some sort of pressure sensor or something where it ticks on an LED. Not all that complex and just runs off one sensor, but say the pressure drops below X, then the light changes. Can connect that to some sort of audio thing or wifi alert even if you really wanted to. Might not be useful, but one of those "affordable" features I can see companies making one day. Here's a real world example, fits on a tire stem.

So awesome to see fish enjoying that much flow and just going to town floating around.

I shouldn't be amazed by the engineering feat, but it's still amazing to me to see it in practice. What was the soil you used, out of curiosity? I've never tried a dirted tank, but just my own inexperience with dirt+plants (in pots next to tanks and in the garden) crossed with the different sizes of sand has me wondering what the dirt mix is or what on earth could be causing issues with the plants. Lack of flow? So maybe just poking small holes at the base where you have some thicker material to allow water on the roots?

Hey hey, welcome to the forums. I don't know what you mean by "had success" or what you're currently running, but I would recommend not swapping filters unless you're running into issues. Here is a link to my journal to the post where I showed the last time I was running the ACO filters. The course sponge is nice because the shrimp can use it as a hide. The issue is that shrimp can get stuck and can die from that. It just really depends on the individual and your preference. I would suggest something like dragon stone or just getting shrimp hides. They have some really cool ones available.

As mentioned above, you're safe to do water changes. Normally when you're dosing bacteria starter from a bottle you would just add it after the water change is completed. Wait 24 hours before your next water change, but apart from that you're good to go. In a situation like this, it's not a major issue to do a one off water change. It's really common if you're using a soil substrate. Looking at the photo, I don't see anything to really be concerned with. Monitor it and keep an eye on things. It all looks good. The sort of slime you'd want to avoid would be the rainbow colors at the water surface. Those reduce gas exchange. Here's two examples... The first one is just from stagnant water and would be removed by using a fine net and adding surface agitation. The next one is more of the oil and that's where people would remove it by using a skimmer or water changes.

As a sidenote, garlic guard may have some added vitamin C. Edit: yep! "Also contains Vitamin C, a strong anti-oxidant"

What is the filtration like in each tank? Photos do help if you wish to share them. Sometimes the films we see in water can be due to chemicals or contamination, but sometimes it's just a more natural occurrence due to something like the substrate or filtration residues from production, proteins from food. As for now, just do a good size water change and try to clean the walls of the tank off during that process. The goal being to rinse and remove any residue off of the walls and add fresh water. An air stone and water movement would help to keep the residue in the water column long term, but sometimes they can be very persistent and stay at the top of the waters surface. I wouldn't be concerned at all until you have the tank setup for months and are still seeing that same film on the waters surface, indicating it's from food or the fish themselves.

Love it. This is my favorite phrase from trying to learn a bit of a foreign language in school.