Blackwater Bloody Mary Neo Setup

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 3/14/2024 at 3:29 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

I've been feeding a metric ton.... 😞 

Might explain the deaths too? 

IDK.  I ordered some white clouds for now which will live with the shrimp long term.  I'll move out one of the plecos.  SAE for the big tank for BBA control.  We'll see if they like wriggly food.

Won’t the white clouds eat your shrimplets?

[nabokovfan87]

On 3/14/2024 at 4:02 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Won’t the white clouds eat your shrimplets?

I am not extremely worried about it. The white clouds I did have never left the top of the tank and this is the tank with floating plants too.  If they do eat some shrimp, it'll be ok because the colony is extremely well established.  The baby shrimp will also have the moss wall to hide behind (and they definitely do) as well as just the dragon stone that blocks fish from getting in there.

Something to keep an eye on for certain, but I feel great to have these fish in there.

[nabokovfan87]

They are doing well so far. 😁

[nabokovfan87]

......all of the white clouds are now in QT being treated for cysts and some issues of "stuff" on the mouths. Hopefully I have the right treatment and they rebound. I hate to see this.

Symptoms started about 7-8 days after arrival.  I was able to change water on the tank and clean the filters a bit. Still too many worms for my liking, but progress is progress.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Sorry to hear you’re going through it! What are you treating with? I’d probably be throwing salt at it and seeing what happens. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:31 AM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

Sorry to hear you’re going through it! What are you treating with? I’d probably be throwing salt at it and seeing what happens. 

Salt+Kanaplex right now. It's going to take at least two treatments.

I see some improvement, but not what I would've expected so I might need to order in some other meds.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 3/28/2024 at 2:27 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

......all of the white clouds are now in QT being treated for cysts and some issues of "stuff" on the mouths. Hopefully I have the right treatment and they rebound. I hate to see this.

Symptoms started about 7-8 days after arrival.  I was able to change water on the tank and clean the filters a bit. Still too many worms for my liking, but progress is progress.

There is a freshwater fish illness called cotton mouth disease. I wonder if the issue could be that?

[nabokovfan87]

On 3/31/2024 at 7:16 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

There is a freshwater fish illness called cotton mouth disease. I wonder if the issue could be that?

I'll have to get a video and post some photos.  When I first saw it I legit was happy because nI assumed it was literally just a fish swimming with an egg in its mouth and they were spawning on the moss ledge I had added to the tank.

It's some form of a cyst. I've seen all sorts of IDs from a virus (L something), to NTD, to columnaris. I am pretty sure those last two are the same thing just a certain strain.  I did some research and found that it's sometimes due to having a fish in the wrong pH and it's something where they just need better conditions.

Third picture is one who had the cyst "pop".

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

That’s bizarre.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/3/2024 at 11:17 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

That’s bizarre.

Yeah. For sure.

[nabokovfan87]

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.



 

[nabokovfan87]

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.

Edited April 7 by nabokovfan87
autocorrect to wrong word.

[nabokovfan87]

Cleaned the tank, on schedule..... Woot!

I checked both filters because of the easy flow not pushing water quite right. I had it unplugged and it was blowing so much air it felt like a hairdryer or a small fan. 😂

Anyways, sponge was fine.... 30-40 shrimp somehow keep going inside of the tube and having ba party. I don't know how they get in there, but they love that high oxygen environment.

I may end up having to pull this out of the tank soon, just couldn't do it today.