Grace's Garden - A RTBS Planted Tank

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 1/26/2024 at 1:45 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

It's been what feels like years since I've woken up and seen actual fish swimming with Grace in such a way.

Very nice. Perhaps a video? 🙂

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/26/2024 at 5:48 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Very nice. Perhaps a video? 🙂

It's a mess to even sit in front of the tank, but yes! Soon.  That part for the filter should be here any day.

[nabokovfan87]

That old adage of measure twice cut once never met this silly thing called trying to fit a canister on a 75G aquarium.  I get the filter shut off, make space on the floor by just pushing the table back against the wall.  I want it forward enough so it's away from electrical, which probably needs to be moved again.  That all being done then I had to try to remove the tubing that was installed and figure out the puzzle of which ones will fit for where I need.  I had one piece of longer tubing if need be, but it was a one shot deal.

I get the intake setup on the side, install the diffuser and that was like trying to tighten 3 things that rotate in different directions all at the same time.  It was actually 5 things, but you get the idea, more of a hassle than it should be.  On the 407 you have those red nuts at the base, you take those and then loosen them up, pop the pipe in, and tighten it down against the wall of the tubing.  With the diffuser it's the exact same thing.. you attach the tube and the nut goes away from the diffuser pressing the tube against the fitting end. 

So you have to loosen the nut to clamp down the hose, then tighten the diffuser back down because it loosened up, then fix the opposite end because that loosened up, and hope that it all is "right".  I emailed them and explained the directions are pretty bad the the "installation video isn't, but the replied back with a product catalog and a link to the blog section where the most recent post is bordering on 2 years old.  It did leak a little bit and I'm not happy with the install right now, but it's there, it's in place, and it wasn't leaking the last 2-3x I checked.  I would love to better understand the mechanics of this diffuser and how it works.  I believe the outside fills with air, water in the middle of the stone, which diffuses into the water.  It works much more efficiently than trying to push tiny bubbles all over the tank... as long as the water has good circulation.  Despite all the struggle I am very happy about that.

The "fun part" was that after all of that hassle I had to get the outlet pipe installed.  I set it on the back of the tank, try to avoid the electrical and then I am trying to bend all of the tubing in place.  I get it hot, try to reset the memory of the material and it's mostly good.  It took me 2 tries at first because I had to twist it from pointing one way to pointing the other way and I just didn't realize it at first.  Using suction cups to hold the pipes in place definitely has it's faults in this case.  Get that situated, run the last tube and tighten down the nut on the 407 and let the tube settle into place.  It pulls to the right, but it's "fine" until I can get the tubing to settle.  The annoying part is that it pushed the inlet back and then it kept pulling the tube out of the suction cups, banging the steel into the rim and the glass.  Fun.  What was 2 cups holding the inlet pipe is now 4 suction cups holding the inlet pipe.  That one is twisting slightly and just needs to be dialed in.

It's all working, it's all installed, it's all "fine", but there's the explanation for the photo of what it really is to me!  I'm happy its done with.  I do not look forward to moving that lid and the filter in future.

 

Edited January 29 by nabokovfan87
misspoke

[nabokovfan87]

New fish additions courtesy of @SugarBassJoe and they are doing great.  I am so relieved that Grace is still being calm and loving the tank with some more life in it.

Edited January 30 by nabokovfan87

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 1/29/2024 at 7:11 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

New fish additions courtesy of @SugarBassJoe and they are doing great.  I am so relieved that Grace is still being calm and loving the tank with some more life in it.

Ahh!! I love it! 🏆 I don’t know what all the fish IDs are. Probably mentioned along the way up above. I’m guessing mainly rainbowfish. Very nice and natural looking scape. Peaceful. And looks like Grace is enjoying the activity and interacting nicely. Also the juvenile cory is super cute, ORD.

👍👍

Edited January 30 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/29/2024 at 8:17 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I don’t know what all the fish IDs are.

The weird looking ones are the rainbows, they look like an oval? 

The other ones, slower moving are the cherry barbs.  Females are more brownish and the males are bright tomato red.

I forgot to mention.... One of the plecos finally found the cave I placed for them.

[nabokovfan87]

Glass cleaned, things tested, and it's just an easy day today while we do all the things I'm supposed to do week to week. 

Temp felt (to the touch) a tad warm, which might just speak to how cold it's been with the hard floors.  In terms of all of the other things, everything looked good.  GH was 9 and KH was 3.  I added a slight dose of KH buffer to get it up to 4.  Nothing too much because of the shrimp.  I had done a bigger WC this past weekend, which explains why the KH value crept back to what the tap is at.

For comparison, shrimp tank was at a GH of 8, KH of 4.5-5.

When it comes to progress, I am trying to get things to grow.  Both tanks have had the lights turned up.  The floating plants in the shrimp tank are doing very poorly, not thriving.  This could be a flow issue.  When it comes to the 75G tank something has been eating the aponogeton leaves.  It's undetermined what exactly is doing the chomping, but the assumption is that it's the newly added BNP.  It happened pretty much the day after adding that fish as well as the barbs and rainbows.  I can imagine any of them doing the damage, but it's tough to know without visually seeing it happen.  For now, the pleco has been moved out and I'll keep an eye on damage.

I would like to see all of the stems start to thrive a bit more.  The lighting change is going to be the biggest indication there for me.  I also cleaned the lid off today to try to remove that as a factor for the next couple of days.  I need to do a better job of keeping that clean.  The lights I have on these two tanks are pretty old and I am assuming the LEDs are nearing that ~5-7 year range.  At 10-15 I would expect it to no longer function.  It looks dim.  So I did make that decision to try to ramp things up and risk BBA taking off. 

The swords are dealing with it and I remove the bad leaves every other week.  The heater guard is the new focal for BBA and I am just going to need to keep an eye on where things develop and push to remove it as a factor as best I can.

I do see the S.Rep responding well to more light.  I just need to see more. I need to see growth as opposed to stagnation and it'll be great once that happens.  The Susswassertang on the back wall looks so wonderful.  It's really beautiful.  I would love to see that fill in as well.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 2/15/2024 at 8:38 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

The floating plants in the shrimp tank are doing very poorly

Floating plants don’t like glass or acrylic lids but they do ok with an eggcrate lid. However there will be more evaporation and top offs.

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/15/2024 at 6:34 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Floating plants don’t like glass or acrylic lids but they do ok with an eggcrate lid. However there will be more evaporation and top offs.

The shrimp tank has that "well measured" aqueon lid so the front has a good 3/4" gap and there's not a ton of condensation.   I had the light really low.  We'll see!  I agree though, something is just off.

[nabokovfan87]

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

So exciting....

 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 2/15/2024 at 6:38 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

For now, the pleco has been moved out and I'll keep an eye on damage

My baby Bristlenose started dominating the Sword that I have, that yours actually came from. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the reason for you aponogeton being damaged. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 2/17/2024 at 1:50 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

So exciting....

 

Wow! Look at it go!

On 2/15/2024 at 11:07 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

that "well measured" aqueon lid

Aqueon lids.. ugh! ☹️

[nabokovfan87]

Going to have to see how this one grows up to determine the gender and decide on a name. But I'm excited to have this new sharkminnow in the tank. 

Went right behind the grate with the suss, lots of snacks behind there, and likely waiting for the end of the day to go around and check things out.  I watched right as I put the fish in as it crawled along the wood and started grazing along the hardscape. I will always enjoy these guys (sharkminnows).

[nabokovfan87]

Lots of work to do, but it's not happening today! 😂

Grace was being very chill.  She's accepted the new shark as a non-annoyance, which is a great sign.

BBA is definitely going to have a fight on its hands against that new sharkminnow buddy.

And those barbs are just so enjoyable. So beautiful.

 

Edited March 31 by nabokovfan87
removed a photo for blurr

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Wow did a catchup on your tank from 2023 to now. Awesome progress! Rainbows 🌈 are awesome enjoy! Well done riding the waves with this one! You’re having fun with this tank and it shows! 

[nabokovfan87]

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.

Edited April 10 by nabokovfan87

[nabokovfan87]

@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?

Quote

Active ingredients: sulfathiazole (36%), malachite green (1.9%), nitrofurantoin (0.14%), nitrofural (0.14%), quinacrine dihydrochloride (0.27%). Inactive ingredients: excipients (61%)

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.

Edited April 10 by nabokovfan87

[Colu]

It treats bacterial fungal and some parasitc infection this is more like a shotgun approach it is more powerful medication if your unsure what your fish is suffering from I have only used it once to treat a bacterial infections with secondary fungal it did work i wouldn't use it to treat a parasitc infection I would only use it treat bacterial infections or fungal you can get same effect by using ick X active ingredient malachite green and kanaplex or maracyn2 which is my preferred choice  I only used it as a friend had some to hand i had run out of kanaplex   using medication with multiple active ingredient can be very  stressful on your fish I think there better treatment options available  that just my opinion take it with a pinch of salt @nabokovfan87

[nabokovfan87]

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.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Sorry you’re dealing with illness in the fishroom @nabokovfan87. Never fun.

Here is what I consider the staples in my fish first aid kit:

med trio

kanaplex*

jungle fungus tabs*

salt 

Indian almond leaves

i have other things in there that I have used to treat specific things (for shrimps) but probably would not replace those as I don’t expect those issues to recur.

Also I hav Expel-P in there now. I am not certain on this yet but it’s possible it may work better than paracleanse. Last two times I used paracleanse issues were unresolved. 🤷🏻‍♀️ So when things start to expire I may research again and stock the Expel P instead.

*Highly recommend having these 2 because if columnaris ever shows up, you have to act fast. Also Kanaplex treats gram positive and negative I believe. @Colu is that correct?

 

Edited April 11 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Colu]

On 4/11/2024 at 11:18 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Sorry you’re dealing with illness in the fishroom @nabokovfan87. Never fun.

Here is what I consider the staples in my fish first aid kit:

med trio

kanaplex*

jungle fungus tabs*

salt 

Indian almond leaves

i have other things in there that I have used to treat specific things (for shrimps) but probably would not replace those as I don’t expect those issues to recur.

*Highly recommend having these 2 because if columnaris ever shows up, you have to act fast. Also Kanaplex treats gram positive and negative I believe. @Colu is that correct?

Kanaplex predominantly treats gram negative and some gram positive bacteria 

[Odd Duck]

I don’t typically like to use multi-drug meds because any bacteria that survive it are going to be resistant to multiple meds and much harder to kill or control. I lean much more towards using individual, more targeted meds.

The antibiotics in Polyguard are not necessarily considered very strong or broad spectrum (which is why there are so many in there).  I would much rather use Kanamycin (Kanaplex) for external or superficial infections or one of the Maracyns for internal infections. Levamisole (Expel-P) works better against the more common internal parasites but praziquantal (PraziPro and Paracleanse - which also has Metronidazole) has its uses, too, and hits a different class of parasite.

There may come a day when I would use or recommend Polyguard but it hasn’t happened so far because it has more potential to cause big problems with resistant bacteria. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/12/2024 at 6:23 AM, Odd Duck said:

don’t typically like to use multi-drug meds because any bacteria that survive it are going to be resistant to multiple meds and much harder to kill or control. I lean much more towards using individual, more targeted meds.

So far we've lost: 1 baby corydoras, 5 older corydoras anywhere from 1-5+ years old, and one Otocinclus.  We've also lost a bit of the plants and I've put both of the tanks through what can only be described as my best efforts to try to save these fish. 

The last time I sat and watched the fish and I felt gutted it was as if someone took a spoon and scraped the side of my corydoras a little bit.  Whatever this thing is, it's very tough to describe and let these fish suffer through.  I lost half of them to the disease+meds and I lost half of them due to my own unwillingness to let them suffer any further. 

I sincerely hope everyone's tanks are doing ok right now and while I do have this thing narrowed down a bit.... It's not the type of thing where I would ever wish it one anyone.

I believe we're dealing with secondary bacterial issues as well as the main culprit being some type of protozoan external parasite.  I had the scientific group pegged off of a list of diseases, but right now I just don't have the energy to try to track that down again for the post.  Here's this, for anyone wanting some further study articles.

https://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/09/SRAC-Publication-No.-4701-Protozoan-Parasites.pdf

Edited April 29 by nabokovfan87

[Odd Duck]

I can’t remember, have you used Paracleanse yet?  Or Metronidazole by itself?  Metronidazole would be my first choice (vs. Paracleanse because I don’t think you need the Praziquantal at this point) and it can be used with Kanamycin (Kanaplex) or Maracyn-2.  That combo would be my first choice - the Metronidazole is a decent antiparasitic for the microscopics like Hexamita, plus has some antibacterial effects.  I would use it either in the water or in the food.  The Maracyn-2 is a very good, broad spectrum antibiotic that is absorbed through the gut and I would give that in food if possible.  If not possible in food, then in the water.  They can be used together and in this case, I would use both.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/30/2024 at 2:09 PM, Odd Duck said:

I can’t remember, have you used Paracleanse yet?  Or Metronidazole by itself?

I have some packets, haven't used it yet as they are expired. I assume that's not the end of the world. 

I was seriously worried about fin rot and the rapid deterioration, so I started down that route with kanaplex, salt, polyguard. (The issue I was dealing with the white clouds had recommended nitrofur-something as the med to try if the first one didn't work out.  I saw pictures with it occuring in danio and tetra fish but absolutely nothing was available as far as a general idea of what was going on.  Bacterial cysts on the mouth on the WCMM, slime coat issues and fin+body rot on the corydoras, I was leaning hard into bacterial, ich-x, salt as a means to stop the rot and then proceed to any secondary issues like the paracleanse.  So no, I haven't used that yet.

In terms of visibility, usefulness with protozoan issues or.... External "some form of a parasite" issue... What is the difference in use between a high dose of salt, ich-x, malachite green, paracleanse, or prazi? What is the use for one vs the other?

Essentially, I'm guessing one is good for protozoans, one is good as option B is that doesn't work (ich-x vs malachite green). One is good for flukes and things like that, and then the other is a gentler form of that (prazi vs. para cleanse)