nabokovfan87

Maybe jumped into the lid? Spine is a little bent and curving downward. I would just check to verify that against the other fish. I'm very sorry for that issue! It's always been one I have struggled to really ever fix and reminds me of Cory dealing with Hank.

Basically you want to make sure it doesn't turn into secondary infection, redness turns into more normal pinkish color.

Keep an eye on that one for secondary issues, consider some salt / moving that fish to let them recover.

Understood @Colu! Thank you. I am trying to make a "first aid kit" so to speak. Right now it was used because I absolutely don't have much of an idea of what this disease is or what I'm dealing with. At this point it is a necessary step and I am not sure if it makes sense in future to use preemptively (something I am very comfortable doing with salt+ich-x for things like external protozoan diseases), but it might be something that has a use and is something we may actually want to keep on hand? That's sort of my logic. It's actually "cheap" considering what you get out of it, but I appreciate the words of caution. I don't like to use meds unless absolutely necessary. I am working at getting a better understanding of certain key diseases, like I have with shrimp, but what I'm finding out is that it's not as simple as reading the box/website and matching things up to a photo. There is often very misleading directions or very misleading information because a lot of people just don't know what a certain thing really is.

@Colua and @Odd Duck I wanted to ask for the sake of all of us understanding, can we briefly discuss the merits and risks of a product like seachem polyguard? It is affordable, seems to do a key job, and seems to do it well from what I can tell. Can you speak to us as far as the nitrofur..... Bacterial medication and what it is good for? In terms of things I am trying to have on hand at all times.... I think this needs to be on my list, but I want to hear some more experienced and knowledgeable thoughts! Thank you.

Lost a black Cory to some unknown thing. I didn't see any major issues, woke up to it belly up and it looked like maybe it ran into the lid. (This was about a week ago) I checked on the fish themselves, pulled a mass of plants, noticed a few of them showing issues of fin rot setting in and some other things happening with slime coat, external protozoans, or some sort of bacterial issue. I moved them to the side tank with the WCMM from the shrimp tank that are also needing meds. Fast forward 24 hours, salt + kanaplex for a day, and they are missing tails at this point. I let it soak for another 24 hours to finish the dose of meds and did a big water change, readded salt so I knew I had enough in there and then checked on everything. Heater was hot, cut the cord on that so I didn't mistakenly used it and looked for my spare.... Which wasn't there. We had snow 48 hours prior, but it was a balmy mid 70s, not an issue, and I spent the entire day calling the LSS (local saltwater store) to try to get some neoplex. either the corydoras or the white clouds need it and I'm not sure which. Heater ordered online because I had given away my backup. Thankfully it arrived ok, in a paper envelope, and I set that up so I could get things warmed back up. Temp was low 60s, so I am thankful it got here. Meds arrived today.... (4-6 days late because USPS mislead me) and I realized I ordered the wrong size siphon. Apparently small is a nano and nano is a small with a short tube. Oops. So here's the just of where we are. Fish are seemingly ok and the second salt does helped a bit. I do not know if this is some sort of issue where they had an external parasite and it was killed off, but it looked like white powder all over the bottom of the tank. That also makes me think Ich, but it's not ich. I don't think it's Epi either. I am monitoring them, trying to see how they recover. I have one in the big tank that I am monitoring, but I am treating both tanks with meds and there is no need to move this fish at this time. 75% of them seem to be unscathed. I can only assume that the rescue fish has something that got through QT or that there was something from the SAE that was added. The SAE looks happy and healthy, but you just never know when you're adding germs to a tank. There is always something, apart from water that was "plop and dropped". This also happened within days of the white clouds having their issues as well. Separate symptoms, but seems to be related to just the facts of not having new fish in a very, very long time from elsewhere. The fish I have added (swords and rescue fish) we're all local and similar water. The SAE wasn't. I do have a more poignant question, but I will follow up so it's a clear and concise question.

You might enjoy this (or some of the other species they've done)!

Yay! That's awesome. I didn't realize it at first but that plant can handle a lot more light than I had originally thought. 100%. I love watching the lights come on or go out and sneaking the night lights on to watch the bottom of the tank sneak around.

Hm.... Never heard of anything like this. Might be indicating some predation? I had the same thing happen and I couldn't figure out what I was doing. It's really awkward because you see them being saddled and then you see them have everything they need, but you don't see the baby shrimp or eggs. It lasted about 3ish months. I would recommend just verify everything is ok and hold course. Don't worry about powdered food unless you have baby shrimp. Let the plants develop, clean filtration and all that while it's a bit easier to do so. After that little pause in breeding was when my tank exploded and it's been busting at the seams ever since. I will have to go back through my notes and see if there was something I did in particular to try to perk them back into dropping eggs, but from memory I think it was just a matter of waiting them out and checking for losses. Such deep color. Beautiful and seemingly really strong quality. That line and your shadow blue, black rili is really special!

Seems fine. Keep an eye out if the temp is consistently below 70, but it shouldn't be too much of a concern. I would recommend getting a liquid GH+KH test kit as well to be able to track that. (pH gets too high, can lead to other issues and stress signs with corydoras) So yeah, I think what you witnessed is very likely typical, normal behavior. Even a content and happy corydoras will purge up to the surface to gulp air. This is just part of what they do for a variety of reasons. I imagine on some level it's a corydoras "checking" to see if there are predators around and at other times they do it just to signify a little bit of breeding behavior. High stress activities like that can lead them to have some rapid breathing and gulp air. If you watch the fish on the bottom of the tank and they seem frantic and always breathing extremely quickly, rapid gill movement, then you would want to try to add some air stones.

Trim it... Probably dip it / treat for algae as well with peroxide. Cannot wait for it!

There is a multitude or barbs that mimic or have different variations in pattern from the normal tiger barb we all know and love. Seriously fish has some articles on this topic as well as other online resources. Tiger barbs can be considered something like rainbowfish where locations may have slight changes in pattern and or behavior due to where they grew up. This is the same thing Darwin studied on the Galapagos islands. The barb you are discussing above is not a tiger barb, but it is a different species. There is a 5-band barb, 6-band barb, 7 band barb, snakeskin barb. Barbs are awesome! I am familiar with the video you mentioned and anxiously awaiting some wild caught tiger barbs as well.

What are the water parameters, including temperature? Add an air stone (or two) or bubble wall.

You would want to QT them if possible. There are newly found parasites that can go from one group/species to another (neocaridina to caridina even). You would want to research what to look for and then observe them. As things like Australian vs Japanese amano shrimp have found there way into the hobby there is sourcing concerns and parasites that are being found in hobbyist tanks as a result. The link above is the best resource we have when it comes to shrimp diseases that I know of apart from literature available in Europe, mainly Germany. They have good photos and research studies that you can find as well. Get that magnifying glass out!

Your best bet is going to be.... Separate them out to individual tanks to prevent cross-breeding (because they will very likely all be same lineage) Wait for them to grow to larger size and for the pattern to actually develop. Then try to ID them using resources like books, planet catfish, etc.

Can you show us what you're using?

Sponge Filter Issue - Part II I had meant to expand on "how" because clearly I had failed on my own technique for cleaning the sponge filters. This applies to basically any sponge filter you can get your hands on and cleaning any sponge. I am sure a lot of this is useless information for some, but if it helps one person then perhaps it is worth the time. Strips or Sheets of foam are a bit of a pain sometimes to clean because depending on how dense or thick the piece of foam is things can generally be difficult to clean. Foam that is 1.5-2" max thickness seems to be optimal while anything larger will be difficult and anything thinner will be easier to clean, but may not hold up over time. I have some of those dimpled foam sheets, .75" thick and 1/3 of that in some places, which is similar to what you see on pond filters or on the x07 series canister filters. I end up rolling the foam to help "protect it" from being overly crushed. Submerge the foam in water whenever cleaning it, especially initially, and then squeeze it like a stress ball. Optimally you will do this 5-10x until things visually appear clean, then roll the foam the opposite way and expose other surfaces to the exterior and repeat. Do this over and over again until all of the surfaces have been exposed and as much of the gunk has been cleaned. Then you can opt for something like a hose or faucet with water pressure to push that last little bit of gunk out that is very difficult to remove. Secondarily, it is always good to toss that into another bucket of tank water and verify that the sponge is clean. Cleaning dirt off in dirty water isn't the best at times and can lead you to assume it's more clean than it is. One of the rules of thumb for me is to have the sponge not release a bunch of junk when it goes back into the tank. that's about how clean I try to get things. Blocks of foam or tubes of foam like what you see in sponge filters will be a bit more tricky. Especially with the hole in the middle you run into the sponge working against your efforts in some respects. I wanted to be goofy and give funny names to the different positions, but I don't have anyone to take the photos of it while I was cleaning. So unfortunately that bit of silliness is missing, but know that I've really thought about this! 😂 The first technique I will call the push method. This is where you have the sponge itself against the side of a hard surface and you "push it" into the bucket to try to apply a good amount of force without getting water splashing too much. This helps and it great for an initial cleaning, but it does leave a lot of debris in the depths of the sponge. The second technique is something a bit more common which is the "tomato method". Imagine you have one hand and you are trying to just crush tomatoes. This is what most of us do constantly at night when you clean out and squeeze out the water from your kitchen sponge! Take the foam in one hand and let if fill with water, squeeze. Rotate it slightly and let it fill with water, then squeeze again. Repeat this horizontally and vertically too! Meaning that, you might get some of the gunk out of the middle of the foam by compressing the top and bottom together, but then you will get other parts of the foam clean by squeezing the middle of the foam and letting the water rush out of the top and bottom. I do this probably until my arm falls off and then I proceed to the last technique. The third technique is the two-handed claw method. Cup the sponge in your hand and use your thumbs as the pressure points. Make a crab sound and then squeeze the sponge together so that your "claws" are compressing the foam with more force than method two above. Basically it's the exact same thing, but you are just able to apply more pressure/force to rush the water out of the sponge and get more of that very fine gunk out of the filtration media. It kind of reminds me of squishing soft cheese or something, like a cotija cheese into little chunks. The goal in the end is that you have a sponge that is visually clean, feels lighter, and doesn't release debris into water when submerged. One of the things I have noticed on very fine sponge or sponge that is growing algae is that you want to clean things in such a way that they don't feel slimy. For whatever reason the sponge I like the most almost feels like... weirdly cheese.... when it's really, really gunked up with the "mud" from the tank. Getting the foam to feel more like foam again means that things are getting closer to clean. I was trying to think of how to have a tool on hand so I could tell when the sponge itself was clean if I had never touched a sponge before. The idea I had was that having a brand new filter there for comparison would be the best tool. Having something so that you can see and feel what "like new" would be gives you that context of how dirty or clean the sponge from the tank really is. Especially as things compress and wear over the years. That being said.... I wish I had one on hand or could buy just the replacement sponge itself as a spare part or something. Lastly, I just wanted to mention one final thing I have been noticing with the uplift tubes on the easy flow design. If you look at the "cap" on the sponge filter, that green piece that you attach the diffuse or translucent tubing into, then you'll see a lip which is used to pressure fit things into place. Because this lip is only on one side it is what basically holds the air diffuser into place. Unfortunately, there isn't a secondary lip on the upper side of the "cap" which means that it is very easy for a fish or for a hand to lift up the tube and move it around slightly. Just something to keep in mind and be aware of. Make sure things are actually assembled and stay together for you after you're done messing around inside the tank.

@anewbie if you have discord there's Jonny from dan's fish on one of the server trying to ID some unknown plecos that look very similar. Might be a place to reach out to if you're ever trying to track down the correct species. My condolences. Moving fish tanks is such a grueling process and losses on top of it makes it so much more difficult. I would love to see you have that photo printed / framed or something if you wanted to. It's that beautiful.

Literally made me go "uh oh" 😂 Let's just hope that fish doesn't think it can "tunnel" in that sponge! The new additions are great though, I love the way the lemon tetras colored up. This is so perfect. 😂 😂 😂

Absolutely due to stress yes. When they have the energy they will darken up. The video above mentions a lot of details like this. You will end up with a big fish. They swim incredibly fast when they want to. So that's why space is of concern. Keep an eye out for jumping, especially if there is noise around the tank. The fun part of having one is making all the decor for them to swim around, swim through. Enjoy it!

They need "room" to swim. It's not healthy for them to have a short tank. So please try to make that a priority if you can. The new 60 breeders are really beautiful.

If you're following this journal for the "hot tips and tricks" when it comes to shrimpkeeping.... this is one of those posts. I do feel like this deserves it's own thread, but it's such a specialized situation that I want to keep in in this thread. I have been dealing with the sick white cloud mountain minnows, which have improved a lot with the salt, but are still awaiting more meds. For the time being they are in my side tank, by themselves while being treated, and I am still seeing the cysts on the mouth appear. A new one appeared this morning on one of the fish. I am hoping that the other med recommended for this type of an issue works (nitrofuri..... however you spell it) That tank has some black corydoras in there now as well, because I am experiencing issues in that tank as well now. Slime coat issues, fin rot. Ultimately they need salt (getting some from the store) and I am going to end up moving fish for anything that needs kanaplex (or polyguard). ......alright, so what happened.... I wasn't able to work on the tank wednesday, so I did the work on the tank this morning. I drained off some water, siphoned the substrate where I could to remove big chunks of gunk that were present. Overall I am trying to do better with maintaining the substrate, considering removing it to deal with the detritus worms. I saw a blackwater tank setup with sticks as the substrate, and that seems like a beautiful aesthetic. Maybe that is where things go, but for right now I am trying to be more diligent with my efforts maintaining the substrate. Water changes are/were mandatory this week because of the water cloudiness and just wanting to clear things up. All of the parameters tested perfectly normal and safe in all aquariums, which made me assume that the cloudiness has something to do with worm-ageddon from cleaning the previous week. There was just as many worms in this bucket during cleaning, so they aren't having any issues with "thriving" unfortunately. I may end up going the route of no planaria if it turns out that the worms were the type which caused issues with the WCMMs. I filled up the tank with water and wanted to adjust the height of the easy flow. This is where I figured out the puzzle that has been frustrating me for weeks now. The flow was not flowing in the uplift tube as you expected it should. Last week I was taking the tube assembly and holding it up in the water column and then lowering it and noticed the decrease in flow. I assume this just meant that it was because it's a taller tank (29G) and that was causing issues. No.... this absolutely wasn't the reason. It also wasn't an issue of the jet lifter being dirty at all either. (cc @AllFishNoBrakes) I lifted the tube up again, watched it work perfectly fine, then had an issue as soon as I tried to attach the diffuser piece onto the sponge filter assembly. The sponge was so bad, filled with gunk.... despite being just cleaned, that the water itself could not flow through properly. For reference, this is extremely fine sponge that I am using and it's the "gold standard" sponge for me in terms of bacteria thriving on this type of filtration. It's from hikari. I pulled the sponge, checked for shrimp, dropped the air tube into the tank to move water around and took the sponge and bucket to the sink. I think it was a solid 30-45 minutes of cleaning the sponge over and over and over and over again before I was at the point of "tea colored" water. The sponge had to weigh at least 3+ lbs when walking to the sink. It is "difficult" to know when it's clean when something is that dirty, but I just kept going and filling the bucket as I squeezed out the debris. I repeated this with the other filter in the tank as well. I added some clarifier and bacteria to start things re-cycling if they need to. I don't expect it to need to do that, but I am thankful I have that available! So, I am standing there squeezing sponge for a chunk of time pondering why this happened. I run a very high flow air pump and it absolutely didn't help the situation with maintenance longevity, but I am perfectly happy with needing to clean the filter weekly. I think everyone who knows me on here realizes that I have cleaned filters to excess just for the sake of having them be clean. I was cleaning these bi-weekly, but I am going to go back to doing this weekly at this point. The best I can think is that the botanicals being very fine mixed with the air is part of the problem, but the other side of the coin here is shrimp poop. Shrimp have pretty small / fine poop. Especially when you're talking hundreds in a tank in a colony and shrimp of all sizes, it makes sense that any shrimp grazing on the sponge will contribute highly towards clogging up the sponge. The air acts as a vacuum and sucks it into the fine pores, which just clogged the crap (literally) out of the sponge. I do feed heavily. I feed for ~300 shrimp nearly every day of the week. I am going to back that off slightly and I want to get more bee pollen in hand so I can avoid always feeding pellets. The tank should be much happier moving forward and the next project will be to go ahead and re-moss the moss wall with new moss (or Susswassertang) and to have that help with the biological stability. Fingers crossed, knock on wood.... I hope that the tank clears up now.

I would wait until you have a 4 foot tank.

I had the marineland version. It was a very high quality tank (from that brand), but I cannot speak to the top fin brand. I do recommend ensuring top fin has the lid and hopefully the glass is thicker. I had general eye discomfort issues with seeing through the curved glass and that ultimately led me to change out the tank with a standard rectangle 55G one. Beyond that, it's like a "fancy" taller tank and you have to work a bit to fill the vertical space. It's a great size, works well, and easy to maintain.

Absolutely beautiful.