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I've recently been given 3 rosy barbs by my sister. She got them on a whim as tiny feeder fish just for cheap tank fillers without realising how big they'd grow and they are finally big enough that they started causing problems with her white clouds and danios, but the last straw was when they killed and ate her favorite snail. Anyway, I have a very small, heavily planted tank that we were able to move the barbs into but it is way too small for them. I'd been meaning to finish setting up some fibre glass shell ponds in the back yard and I've read that barbs can do okay in ponds so that is the eventual plan for a final home for these fish. Today I got the ponds in the ground, full of water, and got some plants in to start the ponds towards being a habitable environment. I've put in some hydrilla, hornwort, water milfoil, a nardoo, a few scraps of java moss, rotala and I've got some eel grass and some hair grass that I could also add. I haven't got much of a clue how to convert what little I know about cycling aquariums to something that would work in a pond. I've put all the substrate that was in with the plants into a tub in the bottom of the pond hoping that any of the good stuff living on it will colonize the pond. Originally I didn't intend to get any fish at all so at this stage I don't have a filter but I do have an outdoors rated pond pump; one of the ideas I had was to let one of the ponds grow a lot of hornwort and use it as a kind of sump for the pond that the fish will go in, and keep the third one as still water for local frogs. I'm not real sure how to move water from pond to pond though since they are on a similar level so an overflow probably won't do it. As for treating the water, I've read that a bit of crushed vitamin c will go a long way to removing chloramine from water but I haven't dosed any yet. Am I on the right track for setting up the ponds? Is there anything else that I will need? I'm considering getting a solar powered air bubbler maybe like this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/251188761078 for a bit more movement in the water. My mum has a pond with goldfish and the water is always cloudy and gross so that is something I want to avoid. The other thing I'm wondering is what is the best way to gently, and with minimum stress, ease aquarium fish into being pond fish? Of the three ponds that I have one is kind of D shaped with vertical sides, one is kidney shaped with sloped sides, and the third one has a smallish shallower bit connected to a bigger deeper bit. My guess is that the vertical sided one will be the best suited as it shouldn't heat up as quickly as the ones with shallower parts, but perhaps the fish could hurt themselves if they run into the sides as they are roughly textured. Thoughts? It does get very hot here over summer and knowing that barbs like cooler water I am a little worried that being outdoors will cook them so I guess I should get a thermometer in to see how much the water temperature changes on a hot day, it might not be as bad as I think. I really like these fish, they are active and interesting and come over to the side of the tank when they notice me watching them. I want to get more of them so they can be in a proper school when I have somewhere big enough for them to go. I want them to be happy, safe and healthy and I'd appreciate any advice you can give me to help me do the right thing by them.
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Nov 10, 2014 13:33
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I've had the ponds set up in the back yard for a couple of weeks now, long enough to see that the evaporation rate is pretty high and the amount of leaf debris that falls in is also high and it doesn't seem suitable for fish without a lot of work. I'm going to abandon the fish pond idea and leave it for any local frogs that might want to move in. Instead, this week I got a 30 gal tank and have started transferring gravel and plants into it from the waste water tank that I had going, which had plants and ceramic media in it. I squeezed the gunk out of the filter sponge into the trickle filter in the lid of the tank hoping to seed it with some bacteria and put the ceramic media under the spray bar. Should I keep putting waste water from the little tank that does have fish in it into the big tank? Or should I move the fish in to help it cycle? The tank is mostly filled with treated water so I'm worried the bacteria might starve without more fish poop. I haven't added all the substrate and plants that I want to, only a bit on one end and am not sure if adding more while there are fish in the tank would be a good idea. The fish are three rosy barbs which seem happy enough still in their little tank, although they've started doing dominance circle fights. Not sure if that is a function of their age, or that I'd just given them a lot of live food so they were feeling extra feisty or if they just don't have enough room. I took out the sponge filter to give them more room and moved a plant and after that they explored the new layout as a little school with no fighting. I've searched but I can't find whether rosy barbs all fight for dominance or if it's just the males. Two of the fish I have are yellower with a darker tail spot and one is silver with a green sheen and a much fainter tail spot but they were all fighting. I'd assumed it was two males and a female but now I don't know if I have three males!
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Nov 28, 2014 02:44
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Went out looking for some pool filter sand for substrate, the pool shop only had zeolite which looked scratchy and bullshit even though apparently its good for filters. The pool guy happened to be a cichlid fanatic though and gave me a business card for his tropical fish supplies guy (sadly he's 500km away). Looks like I'll be stuck with washing some play sand, if I can find anywhere that sells that. It was pretty cool to come across a fish guy and he says he's planning to get rid of the pool toys section in his shop and get a heap of pond equipment in which will be good, because nowhere else in town seems to have anything.
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Nov 28, 2014 09:55
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I found some playsand, $6 for 20kg. I don't think it's silica sand though, it looks like very fine shellgrit now that I've had a close look at it. It does feel very soft. What do you think? Is this still okay to use? I've been looking at other fish (harlequin rasboras) that are ok from pH 6-8 to go with the rosy barbs once the tank is ready to use so it isn't essential that my pH stays low, and my water supply seems to wander between 7.8-8 anyway. Although, I would like to get corys as well, that was the whole point of the sand really and if I remember most corys like the pH to be lower than 8. I'd be okay with Emerald Green corys or Seuss' corys but I don't like my chances of getting those here; there have only been peppered corys the last 3 times I checked the LFS. I've read about using a bag of peat in the filter to help lower pH but I always thought of those methods as being useful to keep it under 7, not drop it slightly from 8 and I don't want to start a runaway process of dissolving more and more of the sand. Oh that reminded me, I had thought of doing a vinegar test on the sand so I'll do that now.... and it's fizzing like crazy, so its definitely not an inert sand. I remembered also that I have a pH meter so I tested the water in the test tank that I set up with some of the sand and it gave a reading of 9(!) which made me check the tap water, which also came out as 9. I just did my daily water change in the rosys' tank without testing beforehand because the water has NEVER come out that high before, I tested their water and its 8.1 and they don't SEEM distressed, but should I tip some vinegar in there or something to try and drop it down a bit??
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Nov 29, 2014 10:15
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I got a reading of pH 9.4 tonight on my tap water before I did a water change, decided to experiment with vinegar to drop it down since it seems way too high, I don't want to skip a daily change and I don't have any other water source or pH dropper at hand. My rainwater tank is a rusted out poo poo heap so I am ruling out rainwater as I won't know what metals might have dissolved in it. Anyway a tiny bit of vinegar got it to 7.6 but I don't want to be messing around with the pH when I haven't even got a handle on ammonia/nitrite/nitrate yet. My sister has offered me use of her rainwater, which might help for the tiny tank that the fish are currently in but I do not relish this idea for water changes of the big new tank. I had no idea the tap water ph here fluctuated up so high, I feel at a bit of a loss for how to deal with it. I had figured RO water would only be needed for marine tanks but maybe that's an option here? The fish still seem okay, actually they've probably been less greedy for food than usual, fussier about which flakes they eat and which ones they spit out. They took some frozen stuff okay but I'll have to keep an eye on their poops in case they've got issues. As I don't know the cycle status of either tank I'm going to get a master test kit and try to get on top of the water quality situation. Ammonia doesn't seem to be available for cycling so I am continuing to use fish poop water and a little fish food in the new tank; the thought occurs that I should take out the activated charcoal parts of the filter and put something else in to let the water chemistry do its thing. Would this help? Forgot to mention, one of the cats found my tub of rinsed play sand and decided to help me out by adding his own ammonia source  can't decide whether to rinse it some more or throw it out.
Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 30, 2014 18:22
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Taking pictures of fish is hard!  Here's two of my rosy barbs in their temporary plant tank. The other half of the tank off to the right is much more clear of plants so they have an open space if they want or the plant zone to hide in if they want. Two of the three are yellow like the one on the right. I took out the charcoal filter trays from my trickle filter today, but without the tray the remaining sponge is very thin and floats away. I found that 6 scrubber sponges like these  will fit in the slot side by side so I rinsed some new ones in tank water and put them under the thin black sponge and weighted the whole lot down with some bionoods to see how it goes. I've seen people use these in DIY filters so I guess they might work ok. So now it looks like this:  The spraybar, if you could call it that, is pretty terrible. It's made up of little rectangular segments that push on to each other, so they can use the same part for different sized tanks. The flow doesn't reach to the end of the bar, it sags in the middle and it leaks at the joints. I can't complain too much, I can't tell if its good enough or not and it might be fine really. I've got what I think is enough substrate so once thats rinsed I can get that in and finalise plant placements. The LFS doesn't have master test kits so I'll have to buy one online so it'll be a wait before I can see what's going on with the water chemistry. I hope the plant tank will suffice in the meantime.
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Dec 1, 2014 11:38
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I've got some weird semi-clear streamers of snot forming on the corner joins of my new tank already, I'm guessing this is some muck that likes growing on the silicone and because it's a new tank there is nothing to keep it under control. Could it be algae? Or maybe just some bacterial slime? I added some worms and seed shrimp from my snail jail tank and already there are three seed shrimp in the snotty stuff, either they're eating it or it's eating them, only time will tell. I saw a broken off piece of hair grass stuck at the water line and got a good look at it through a magnifier and it had a few rotifers growing on it so it looks like using fish poop water has worked to transfer some starter life to the tank. Regarding the clear slime though, since the tank is planted now I've been giving it between 4 to 6 hours of light a day, should I stop in case this is contributing to the weird slime growth?
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Dec 3, 2014 15:49
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It was gone already this morning, which I think is a good sign that the competition has taken hold (or maybe it just broke off and ended up in the filter). I didn't buy a tank starter/cycler but I already had a tank with infusoria that I used a bit of to try seeding the tank, plus all the plants I've put in were probably covered in various lifeforms, and I've been squeezing the brown gunk out of my other filter's sponge into the filter of this tank. I transfered some more plants across from the fish's tank to the new one tonight, so the fish now have 2/3 clear space and 1/3 plants and they seem to really appreciate the extra room. It will be really nice to see them in the big tank once I can test that it has safely cycled, the master test kit is in the mail and should be here soon, and then they'll finally be in a decent set up and not a half arsed emergency set up.
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Dec 4, 2014 12:41
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I've had two planted mini tanks running since August, one is the snail jail and also has mini crustaceans such as copepods and ostracods and some kind of freshwater annelid worm, the other just for mini crustaceans with a single snail to provide digested plant matter for the parameciums to eat. I started with only pond snails but got some nice red ramshorn snails and hydras by accident on some java moss. These snails brought in with them some snail parasites, or perhaps symbiotes, I'm not really sure. I did some research to try and work out whether the snails were covered in flukes but as far as I can tell the snails stayed healthy despite being covered in little worms and the worms themselves are predators for flukes. So I surmised that the java moss/snails came from a source where flukes were prevalent enough to feed the worms on the snails, and kept all of the above quarantined out of my main plant tank (which later became the temporary home for my rosy barbs). In the snail jail, the ramshorns soon outcompeted the regular pond snails, and even the hydras started disappearing. Meanwhile in the other tank, there has been an outbreak of some weird flat worm. My very first snail tank I had to clean out because it became overtaken by planaria and they fouled the water with their mucus; these flatworms I have now are shaped more like elongated barrels and don't have an obvious head end like a planarian so they aren't those. They seem to be predatory as I have seen an ostracod inside one of the bigger flatworms and I haven't seen any copepods in that tank at all for a while. The flatworms are quite tiny though. I had wanted to use the plants from the flatworm tank in my main tank but I'm worried whether the flatworms would be harmful to any fish. But I think maybe they can't be parasitic flatworms as there isn't anything for them to parasitise in the tank that they're in, and yet they're thriving. I'm torn between the idea that a variety of freshwater life would make for a healthier tank, and ewww these worms look horrible and could be parasites. Anyone got any ideas about what make for healthy micro-inhabitants of a freshwater tank?
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Dec 6, 2014 05:15
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The master test kit arrived today so I did some testing. The small tank (I am guessing it's 5 gal at most) that is the temporary home for the three fish has ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and nitrate 5ppm. So they are fine to stay in there a while longer while the big tank settles down, and I could probably get away with not water changing every single day. I'll probably still do it, it's fun in a small tank and the fish follow the gravel vac around and check out what gets stirred up. I've been using an air hose attached to the plastic body of a syringe as a mini-vac but I've ordered a proper one for the other tank. The big tank is showing somewhere over 0 but under 0.5 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 10-20 nitrate so it hasn't finished cycling yet. Looks like there is no point using water from tank A to try to feed tank B, I'll stick to the fish food method for now. I'm quite relieved about the first result and pleased with the second. There should be enough "food" in the big tank for the bacteria not to starve and the colony size to build up and it looks like the small tank will be suitable as a quarantine tank once the big tank cycles and I can move the fish over. The piece of wood that I bought for the big tank is still soaking in a bucket, it's had a week underwater and is much heavier but still too buoyant; the water colour is good, not very brown at all. I want the wood to be already established in the big tank anyway before I move any fish there so that I'm not adding something new and affecting the water chemistry. The pH is 8.2 in the big tank and 6.8 in the bucket of log/water so I think it will help without making the water too drastically acidic. My sister was really anxious about the wood since knows someone who added a big piece of wood to their cichlid tank and it apparently killed the pleco and made the cichlid get holes in his head, but a) why would you add wood to a tank where you want the pH to stay high b) the pleco probably gnawed on the wood c) I thought hole in head disease was caused by specific organisms, not wood. Anyway I think with just barbs, corys and rasboras the pH isn't going to be that big a deal as long as it doesn't get too high, and the wood won't hurt them. It's been really good for me I think, trying to get started the right way with aquariums. Checking the fish morning and night and doing the daily clean and water change has been a good way to break some old bad habits and add something different, positive and relaxing to my daily routine. I managed to kill a danio and some kind of catfish when I was a teenager most likely due to not knowing anything about cycling a tank or how to ensure adequate oxygenation, I don't think they even lasted a week. It was really upsetting and like many newbies an early bad experience put me off for a long time. It's a lot different now, there is so much good information on the Internet and I'm really glad that I decided to have another go.
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Dec 8, 2014 04:24
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 a blender? Really? Is clove oil that bad?I've had two consecutive zero readings for ammonia and nitrite on my new tank but I'm not sure if that's because there's not much in there or if the biofilter is working. I'm relying on pellets that claim to be 53% protein so that should be rotting down to ammonia, surely. I bought a battery air pump for emergency back up oxygenation and it arrived yesterday, so I'm feeling like some kind of psychic as there has been a power outage all morning so I've got good use out of it already. How long without flow does it take before the filter bacteria start dying off though? Or should it survive as long as it's still wet? I don't mind having to start the cycle all over in the new tank but it will be lovely if the temporary tank has to cycle again to because of this power failure. I might as well do a fish cycle in the new tank if that happens.
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Dec 10, 2014 03:54
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Maybe you accidentally contaminated the tank with some chemical from your hands or whatever you used to put the new fish into your aquarium? It seems pretty unlikely for healthy fish to die of disease that quickly whereas I would imagine something toxic introduced to the tank would hit everything at once in the way that you describe, killing the weakest first. It's something I'm really paranoid about myself since it only takes one casual slip up. Forgot to say: I'm sorry for your loss.
Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 03:01
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Well that's enough to convince me. I'm in Australia too and I was going to get some extra rosy barbs either tomorrow or Monday (enough to let them school properly) and I was debating whether to quarantine or not. I'm definitely going to quarantine now. I've managed to keep these three fish alive for maybe a month; they seem quite happy and healthy and now that I've moved them to the big tank, I don't want to risk adding stressed or sick fish and losing the lot. It looks like my set up, with moderately hard water, higher pH and many plants is an ideal environment for Columnaris to take off and I want to be extra careful if our fish suppliers are dealing in contaminated fish. I'm mid way through cleaning out the little tank that the fish were in before, as soon as the fish were gone the snails got cocky and came out of the gravel in masses. I would say there were easily 30 snails where I thought I had 5 or 6 at the most. I've pulled all the plants out and put a piece of lettuce in to try to lure them out. Looks like it was mostly snail poop that I've been vacuuming up from that tank, not fish poop, but it seems to have helped the tanks cycle just the same. I had planned to put plants back in there but I think I'll leave them out while I am quarantining fish. Do you think it's worth pre-emptively dosing the quarantined fish with something like triple sulfa just in case? or maybe a bit of aquarium salt? Actually maybe what I'll do is have a medicated tank, empty with just an airstone for bathing new arrivals, then put them into the little gravel/planted tank for quarantine after that. I'm not willing to accept "They're just fish, it doesn't matter if they die, just buy more" which I keep hearing from people around me. Of course it matters.
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Dec 12, 2014 07:16
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Perhaps I spoke too soon, the fish have been acting a bit weird today. Ever since they've been in the bigger tank, they've been doing the occasional lap lengthwise of the tank. It's seemed like a normal thing to do, a growing fish "stretching its legs" so to speak. Today they have been racing around in ridiclulous zigzags at breakneck pace. I am pretty sure one has cleared the surface once or twice, although my tank is covered so I am more worried about them hurting themselves than falling out. They also seem to be either trying to school with, or fight with, their reflections in the glass. I'm not sure if they even see their own reflections from the inside but the way they keep facing and swimming at the glass makes it seem that way. They don't seem to be chasing each other as much as evading something. I saw one of them dash to the bottom hard enough that a little cloud of sand puffed up after the impact. And just now when I checked them, they were huddled together in the bottom back corner, under their java moss, rapidly breathing and looking the worst I've ever seen them. Although, when I moved to the other side of the tank to get a better look, they positioned themselves on the other side of the powerhead inlet where I couldn't see them so they aren't exactly limp and on deaths door. I have a cut piece of sponge over the inlet strainer like a sock so that they can't be sucked on to it and get hurt, and they tend to hang around it and pick at it. I turned the tank's light on to get a better look at them and their colour seems good, the same as always. No weird marks and no visible damage to fins or tails. They even seemed to relax a little with the light on and started doing small patrols of the tank. I just don't know these fish well enough to judge whether they were actually distressed, sleeping, just having a breather after some more maniac zigzagging, if they're scared and trying to avoid perceived surface predators and stressing out because their school isn't big enough, or whether something they ate didn't agree with them or whether they are legit dying. Tank parameters are: Ammonia 0 or very close to 0 (hard to tell if there is a hint of green in the yellowness, certainly its not as high as 0.25 compared to the colour chart) Nitrite 0, Nitrate 5, pH 8 and all of these look about right, the same as last time I tested the water. I've propped up some black plastic on the outside of the tank in their corner hoping that the issue is behavioural rather than medical, if they feel more sheltered there maybe they will stress out less? The plants in the new tank aren't as crowded together as the old one, so the loose java moss cloud was supposed to help give them more cover but maybe it just wasn't enough.
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Dec 12, 2014 17:31
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The three rosy barbs are still alive, but are still hiding under their java moss behind the filter inlet and looking distressed. I've increased their cover by adding black plastic garbage bags on the back and both short sides, and I've turned off all the lights. It's hot today so I've got a piece of foam propping the hatch in the lid open, and I've added an airstone to help with surface movement for evaporation/cooling. There is still some lightning fast movement in and out of that corner every now and then so I think they are scared and stressed. Still no clamping of fins, but they are still rapidly breathing. It's hard to see but their gills don't look discoloured or anything. They're not interested in food at all at the moment, instead of coming over to be fed they hide as soon as they see me. The only thing I can think of is I did a small water change of about 5 litres and it was definitely after this that they've been acting weird. Maybe that's what scared them?  Here's what they were like before. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 06:34
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Thanks for the reassuring words. That gif was the "happy" view where they're just doing laps and looking for wigglers to munch on. Full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr0tleCYnPQ They certainly aren't a slow swimming fish. Now, I can't even have the light on in the room without them completely disappearing under their java moss. But they revert to normal behaviour when it's dark and they think no one is looking, and my water measurements are still good. I think (hope!) they'll improve when I can add more to their school. For now I'm just trying not to stress them as they launch themselves and bump into the sides of the tank and I don't want them to hurt themselves.
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Dec 14, 2014 02:50
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Yes. I think I was just lucky with them prior to this, or they felt safer in the smaller planted tank. I did a lot of reading to make sure I could give them a big enough tank and a better life than they were having in my sister's 5 gallon tank. I've always intended to get more when I had capacity to house them and had a better grip on keeping the water parameters under control. I think I will buy 5 if I can, the quarantine tank is a bit small but it worked okay with daily water changes last time and maybe safety in numbers will help reduce stress for the new fish. Hiding fish:  Edited to add: HOLY poo poo life loving finds a way... Whats this?  Magnified:  This has to be a rosy barb fry, I haven't ever had any other fish. The tank he's in, I've smushed the gravel around horribly, vacuumed it, ripped out plants, smashed the gravel around some more; as far as I know my rosy barbs are way too small to be breeding size, the water's too alkaline, I've never even seen any eggs. This is so unexpected - it's ridiculous that anything survived all that. I only just found this guy while I was scooping out some excess gravel and now I don't feel like I can mess with that tank any more OR put new barbs in it as a quarantine, since they'll just eat any other survivors. Maybe I can move the hang on back filter to the tank that the plants are in, put the new fish in there, and leave the fry where he is with the sponge filter going? I do have some fry food which I'd been using to feed my infusoria and I've added a few scoops of water from the infusoria jar as an alternative food source in case the fry powder is still too big for him to eat. Just amazing. ... So far I've spotted five fry! Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 04:11
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Tiny Lowtax posted:I like your tank. Currently I only have gravel and fake plants. If I wanted to add some sand, like you have, how would I go about doing it? Thanks! As far as I can tell, opinion is divided on whether sand is a good idea or not. Some say don't have it at all, it doesn't allow water movement through the substrate, you end up with anaerobic pockets or "dead zones" full of bad gasses and these can somehow kill your fish. Others say sand is great, it doesn't allow food or waste to fall through gaps, making it easier to vacuum only the surface. And the anaerobic zones are important for allowing certain natural types of bacteria to grow and there is no way for the gas from a dead zone to actually kill fish and no evidence that it has ever actually caused a mass fish kill like the naysayers claim. I wanted some sand because I intend to get corys later on once the tank settles down and supposedly sand is better for their bellies to rest on. I have probably under an inch thick of sand to be on the safe side. I'm using washed play sand but silica sand would be way better, I ran it under the tap and tipped off all the cloudy stuff and my criteria for when the sand was clean enough was when what was left in the bucket settled leaving clear water within 5-10 seconds. Washing the gravel was about the same. Normally you're supposed to lay out your zones of gravel/sand, build different levels using plasticard supports, plant the plants THEN add water. I was dumb and already had water in the tank because I wanted to get the filter cycling ASAP. I just made sure I had clearance at the top so I could put my arms and substrate in without overflowing everything. I used bigger "frog rocks" to build up the taller sides, filled the gravel first, then put the sand in the empty zone in the middle. I did some experiments, putting gravel on sand makes a horrible mess, and putting sand on gravel is even worse (and the gravel works its way to the top anyway) so I determined in advance I had to use something to seperate the zones. The frog rocks work quite well, they're flattened and they stacked into kind of a wall that doesn't easily move or allow much spillage from one side to the other. They ended up fairly buried in gravel and sand so you can't see them that well. I accidentally overflowed the gravel on to the sand a bit when I was trying to plant on that side but it doesn't look too bad. The easiest way to add sand where I wanted it to go was to scoop up a small cup (I used a silicone muffin pan) with (still wet) sand, carefully lower it right ways up into the water, then tip it out gently right near the bottom. It kind of flows out everywhere but didn't make much of a mess or cloud up the water as it wasn't falling very far. Slowly and gently tipping lets you control more finely exactly where the sand goes. If you already have gravel you'll probably have to scoop some out to make room for your sand and work out a way to stop the two from merging together.
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Dec 14, 2014 06:25
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I forgot to say I have plastic mesh under all that against the bottom of the tank to protect it in case I dropped anything heavy in there. I've read to use egg crate but I have no idea what that is, egg crates are cardboard here so I used strips of gutter mesh.
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Dec 14, 2014 07:49
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Looks good SocketWrench, nice simple and sturdy. I love open top tanks with plants growing out, it seems more natural to me. Too scared to try it myself though, in case the fish jump out, or the cats jump in. I checked up on the baby fish tonight and noticed there is one swimming around happily in the snail jail and another one in the crustacean tank - it must have been about a week ago I topped them up using reject tank water from the big tank, but in the same container that I'd used when I vacuumed the gravel of the small rosy barb tank. So each got an egg or two and most likely I watered my garden with a bunch of fish eggs. How long do they take to hatch anyway? The extra fry look a little bigger than the ones in the main tank, maybe not from the same batch of eggs, or maybe less competition for food has let them grow more? Copepod and ostracod nauplii are even smaller than brine shrimp nauplii so probably make good fry food. There is plenty of snail crap in both side tanks, plenty of paramecium eating that, then it all follows from there.Here's a pic of my involuntary fish nursery:  I put some extra hornwart in the middle tank for cover and I've got it lit with some led strips hopefully to attract the nauplii and baby fish to the same place to let nature take its course. The bigger fry in the right hand tank seems to be interested in the powdered fry food I offered him and was mobile enough to chase it as it drifted through the water. I can clearly see the fan of his tail whereas the others don't seem to be as developed as that yet. My sister's white clouds spawned but she had trouble keeping the fry alive, I don't think she was feeding them often enough and in the end one of the adult white clouds leapt into the nursery box and ate the two that had survived. So my main concern right now is making sure they have enough food, since water quality doesn't seem to matter to them at all and they are safe from predatory adults. RE: your egg pooping platy, better out than stuck in! maybe it's her way of telling you she doesn't like the new lights, maybe they didn't get fertilized in time, who knows. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 12:33
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Ahhh thanks ragzilla, I remember that stuff from the ceilings at school. I had no idea that was also called egg crate, I used to raise crickets when my sister had frogs so egg crate just makes me think of http://www.theroachcafe.com/egg-creat-12-pack/
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Dec 14, 2014 16:18
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Today I got four rosy barbs from the LFS, I think a 50/50 mix of male and female going by shape although they are too young to know for sure. One male has a very pink belly compared to the others, which are all a fairly even yellow-gold. I have acclimated them and got them in the quarantine tank and, in comparison to how they were in the shop, they seem lively and happy and have started rooting around in the substrate and experimentally nipping the plants. I'm looking for signs of injury or disease because they put on a big fight against being netted in the store. Pinky seems to be missing a scale which I will keep an eye on; I am assuming the pink belly is natural rosy barb colouring and not a sign of disease - he looked super red under whatever lighting they had at the store. They all seem to have fairly red gills, however since they are more pale than my other three it might be that the gills stand out more than what I am used to. They don't seem ill or stressed at all, they didn't even seem to care about being bagged and carried around. They are a little smaller than my existing three but not dangerously so, perhaps this will help the hierarchy settle down a bit when quarantine is over. I've got the quarantine tank at the end of my main tank hoping that the timid fish will see the new ones and that it might calm them down a bit. They're still very spooked, even with 3/4 of the tank covered and the lights dimmed. I'm tempted to make the quarantine period a short one, I'm torn between wanting to get the school up to a reasonable size to settle the scared fish down and wanting to protect them from incoming disease. Of the baby fish that I discovered yesterday, I can still see at least 5 of them that have survived the night. I saw one picking at gunk on the ceramic noodles in the tank so I feel a bit better about their chances of survival if they are able to find food by themselves. Three of them show interest and chase the particles of fry food that I've tried to feed them, not sure if the others are still too young or if they are a bit defective due to the rough treatment they've had so far in life. Still, if they all survive, I'll have 14 rosy barbs to contend with which is really too many! They should be okay while they're still young but who knows how long they take to reach full size.
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Dec 15, 2014 10:12
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Bonus babysnaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpftXL0OLvA I didn't think I'd be able to film them as the effective range of this magnification method is about 2mm inside the glass but the sunlight drew him over and he seemed unfased by the lens being poked right at him.
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Dec 15, 2014 12:37
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I've had my first fish death  - one of the new ones from Monday. When none of them dropped dead on the first night, or through the next day, and they were all still healthy and active looking Tuesday night, while the other fish were still spooking and stressing I thought it would be better for all of them to be in one school in one big tank. The theory being that reduced stress would be good for everyone but if they got sick I could just treat the one tank. A couple of the new ones schooled up with the original three straight away. The fish that died is one that hung back and avoided the other fish the most, although it was still active, eating, no discolouration or fin clamping or any other warning sign that I could see and it wasn't avoidant the whole time either.I found it floating kind of belly up, pale, gills closed, belly somewhat blackened and swollen (but this discolouration lined up with how it was floating I think). On closer inspection one of the fins was torn off so possibly it died from trauma and the bloating and blackening was just post mortem rotting? Or the other fish knew it was sick and attacked it? I'm not sure and I'll be keeping a close eye on the other fish, although I don't know what I can actually do if there is something bacterial going on. The three rosy barbs I already have apparently murdered other fish before so I can hope it was just murderous bullying or perhaps protecting the school from disease. I didn't see any signs of aggression when the new fish were added, and the stress and spooking has all but vanished. My water chemistry is still Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate < 5; the pH is higher than I'd like at 8 but it seems steady. I've been watching one of the other fish that seems darker than it was; but it's hard to say whether it's just going olive green like one already has done or if it's actually sick. Wait and see I guess. Oh and on top of this, one of the original fish has done some gross white teardrop shaped poops that make me think of tapeworm segments. I don't know how likely that is in fish but I fed them some smushed up pea in case it was constipation or something else. Any one got any ideas? Hard to accurately capture as the scales are so shiny. The black mark near the tail is supposed to be there.  On even closer inspection the fins ARE still there, what looks like a red stump does still have a tiny transparent fin coming out of it.  I think rosy barbs might be a bit of a pain to use colour to judge if they are sick or not. Going red is normal, maybe going green is normal? They certainly change colour depending if it's light or dark (the tailspot intensity changes, in one of my fish it almost disappears completely at night). Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 04:50
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Yeah it wouldn't surprise me, a rosy barb's day seems to consist of nibbling everything in the tank then going back and nibbling it again in case it turned into food while they weren't looking. Okay I won't worry too much then, mostly I just don't want something to spread to the others. But even if they ALL die, I still have at least 7 babies in the nursery tanks (found a couple swimming near the top in the main tank and have transfered them to safety) which is plenty of rosy barbs to make a new school assuming I can keep them alive. There are still some babies in the main tank that I couldn't catch, they are hanging around under the frogbit and various floating plants that the other fish have uprooted and I haven't tried replanting yet due to the stress situation. I think calling these fish hardy is something of an understatement, one of the tiny babies was hanging out near the water outlet happily getting smashed by water from above and coping with it/swimming against the flow just fine. Not to mention avoiding being eaten by their voracious parents.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:46
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My mum has some liquid chemical for her pond to get rid of algae, which I think it reacts with phosphate? I've seen Phos Zorb, didn't think I needed it but since I've been scrutinising my tank more I've noticed a little bit of hair algae here and there, and what I think might be beard algae starting to grow on some of my java moss. I'll be reducing the amount of light in the tank so that might help, otherwise I might have to take more drastic action before it gets out of hand. What are you using to test your phos levels? I feel wary of little pouches of consumable that sit in your filter since when they stop working your problem comes back invisibly, but if you replace them too soon it feels a bit wasteful. If you try Phos Zorb, let us know how it goes. No more of my fish have died so far, looks like I might get off lightly with just one death. The remaining school of six have a little more confidence than before but still startle easily, the older ones moreso than the newer ones. I was hoping the new ones would be a good influence on the timid fish but it looks like the timid fish might be spreading panic to the new fish. I'll keep the tank partly covered and lights more dim and see how it goes. I've had a sponge over the filter inlet strainer with the idea that it would be a bit safer mechanically for the fish, however it prevents chunks of waste from being removed properly. I noticed one of the weird white poops get stuck to the sponge, then another fish tasted it to see if it was food. If it's tapeworms or even just some diseased poop I don't want other fish chewing on it and getting sick so the sponge is gone and the poop has been sucked away, no longer accessible for chewing. Hopefully no fish gets sucked onto and stuck on the filter inlet, I moved their java moss to the other corner to try and encourage them not to huddle around the filter inlet all the time and that seems to be working. I imagine the filter inlet strainer is supposed to be safe for use with fish but the idea that one of them could get hurt by it kind of bothers me. The idea of rosy barbs eating each others diseased poo poo, and rosy barb diseases that have probably evolved based on rosy barbs trying to eat each other's poo poo bothers me more than the filter sucking too hard.
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Dec 18, 2014 16:26
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I've been soaking a piece of driftwood for a couple of weeks now and tonight went to tip the water out of the bucket it's been in to make room for doing a water change (I've been soaking the wood in tank water where possible) - only to find the bucket was empty. And the airstone that I had running in the bucket but forgot to take out when I disconnected it had sneakily siphoned everything out some time over the last couple of days. It went into the carpet of course, but the carpet didn't even look wet even though it was drenched. At least nothing died due to my first big aquarium stuff up. Something is still upsetting the gut of some of my fish so I have some praziquantel on order, and I was also recommended to get metronidazole vs Protozoa while I was at it but the only place I could find selling that in AU was guppys, which has the occasional very poor review and mandatory $40 shipping. I decided to take my business elsewhere and guessed that Protozin might be an okay substitute, anyone tried it and know how it compares? Or, does anyone know where I could get metronidazole or a similar *idazole medication for fish in AU? If nothing else I think Protozin will murder all my snails, I think it has copper in it. I was eating dinner while watching the tank and noticed a large number of white specks all over the glass inside the tank. I took some pictures but couldn't really identify what it was. At first it looked like a tiny snail but I've seen both tadpole and rams horn snail eggs hatch and the hatchlings are much bigger and easily recognisable as a snail. There are smaller ones and bigger ones and they mostly stay still although I have seen them pivot on the stubbier round end.  Anyone know what they might be?
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Dec 21, 2014 17:13
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I had some luck with my shy fish today. When I turned the filter off ready to drop some flakes in, 5 out of 6 fish came over to beg at the side of the tank. Sadly fish #6 stayed hidden behind a plant; I had a closer look and he seems to be missing 6-7 scales on one side, and 2 or 3 on the other. He is the smallest fish and used to be the most keen to explore along with the reddest one so I wonder if he got stuck in some plant roots or against the filter inlet? He's been hiding with the others for a day or two and this is the first time I've had a good look at him. The side with most scales missing looks kind of puffy but its hard to tell. I haven't seen any fuzziness or tiny white spots so I am assuming it is actual physical damage scale loss, not disease although who knows. This fish still seems to have an appetite as he was pecking at leftover flakes after I had moved away from the tank and he felt safe to come out from under the plant. I've put the sponge back on the filter inlet for now as not only do I have a damaged scaled fish, I also saw what looked like an egg with a tail trying to swim and I spotted yet another fry up the other end of the tank. I don't want minced baby fish in the pump even though I already have more babies than I need. Anyway it looks like mostly the fish are settling down a bit now. The mini UV lamp that I ordered arrived today, it is a little barrel shaped USB powered device containing 4 UVC LEDs. I have stuck it at the very end of the trickle filter under a sponge where I hope it will get a slow enough flow rate that it can work effectively on whatever passes through it. So now I have 2 USB cooling fans, a USB/battery back up airstone and a USB UV sterilizer running from a little powered hub that I've taped to the lid of the tank. I don't imagine that it's going to quickly cure any of my problems but every little bit helps, right? Since I'm still waiting for the fish drugs I ordered to arrive, I decided to try soaking their food in 3% epsom salts to help the fish with their white poop (something I read about) and it does seem to have made a difference. A couple of fish managed normal droppings, and one that previously was doing thick white poo, did one that was quite thin and didn't seem to bother it as much. Hope they hold out long enough for me to try some real medicine on them, its a pain that everything here is shut over christmas and I don't want to wait too long to start treating them.
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Dec 23, 2014 14:34
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Another one bites the dust; Sandy, the fish that was hiding but still eating went from swimming around a bit more normally today to being full on upsidedown pinecone dropsy-fied and then dead tonight. Even a couple of hours ago the pineconing wasn't obvious, but I think that might be partially due to the lighting and how shiny his scales are. I thought some were missing and could see he was a bit swollen but really I just didnt notice the dropsy probably for a couple of days. Even if I had realised earlier, all I could have done for him was a salt bath I think. I don't think the praziquantel that I dosed the tank with yesterday killed him, he was already wobbly before that. I'd say I'll keep a closer eye on the others but I'm not actually sure what to do about whats happening. This was one of the new batch of fish and I suppose its still recent enough to count as a new fish death, but if it seems to spread to the others in the tank I don't know what my next step will be. At last count I still have 9 visible baby fish of a max of 13, so if I cant work out a treatment and all the adults die maybe I will just clean the tank out and get some corys, then move the next generation across when they are big enough.
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Dec 25, 2014 16:03
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I fed a mashed up pea to my barbs yesterday as a change from all the flake they've been having and one of them got a bit that was a little too big. He worked at it a bit, dropped it, picked it up again, then lined up and rammed into the side of the tank face first to mash the pea down his mouth hole  is this normal? I watched him working at it since he'd got it fully in his mouth but still not going down and he eventually swallowed the pea, at first I thought he'd choke on it but then remembered that's not how fish work. I am guessing he's got some way of chewing or grinding his food since barbs are omnivores.Got sick of waiting for my soaking wood to waterlog properly and stuck it in the pressure cooker. It definitely helped but I didn't leave it in there long enough, and as well as that the inside of my pressure cooker is now evenly coated with sticky resin. It got the wood to the point where very little weight was required to counteract the buoyancy so I've put it into the tank with a couple of rocks weighing it down and hopefully it will waterlog the rest of the way from there. The fish do seem to like having more solid cover and explore more around the tank now but they still hide a lot. I wonder if they would be less skittish with other fish in the tank? Maybe some white clouds? I did want corys but I don't think they'd help give the barbs much confidence. Or maybe I'll just have to wait until the fry grow up to give them a bigger school, I definitely don't want to make the mistake of adding more and more fish without leaving room for them to grow. On last count I still have 9 or 10 fry, in various stages of growth even though in theory they are all around the same age. The biggest one is like a tiny adult, he has all his scales and fins and even shows a spot near his tail, whereas the smallest one has only just got the second part of his swim bladder forming. I got myself an Aquael brand 20 litre / 5 gallon shrimp set (tank, heater, filter, light) for Christmas which I'd like to set up to raise the fry in, their current tank is a filthy chipped shambles with way too much gravel and snails. I think it'd be cool to have a few shrimp as well, are baby fish and shrimp compatible or do they compete for the same kinds of foods? I think if the fish grew big enough to become a menace to the shrimp it would be a good time to move them to the big tank.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:12
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I've been having really bad algae, the brownish stuff which coats the glass and leaves and rocks, but only in my big tank. I thought it was due to lighting or new tank syndrome but then I realised the only reason my other tanks don't have it is because they have snails. I threw some ramshorn snails in and within 2 days most of it was gone. However I found a completely empty picked clean shell at the bottom earlier, so either the anti fluke medicine did it in then the barbs ate it, or the barbs got hungry and ate it without help. I've seen some other surviving snails so I will wait and see if any more empties show up. The fish seem to have mostly recovered from their shyness but I'm still seeing them flashing and some have rubbed off a scale here and there. I'm going to try dosing them with Protozin next which I think is malachite green, formalin and some other ingredient I don't remember, maybe copper sulphate? I have some metronidazole coming too since they're still doing the occasional white stringy poop and I read it could be caused by hexamita. One of my new fish was starting to look a bit bloated so as an experiment I am feeding them a bit less in case she is just a greedy guts and this seems to be helping. I was comparing her size to the other female and she was much bigger, but then I think I had sexed them wrong. I'd been basing it on body shape and intensity of their black spot; well mostly they are all the same shape, still too young to really tell. However the tail spot apparently doesn't mean anything and it's the blackness of their top fin that matters. So I had correctly sexed Lemon, the fatty, as female, but Olive the plump green/orange one is apparently male, as is Melon the pink and green one. Ozzie the yellow and green one is apparently female and therefore would be the mother of all the baby fish I have. The remaining one, Pinky seems to be male. He is torpedo shaped and has black on his fin but his tail spot is quite faint. So the fish that I now think are female also have only yellow and no orange at all as well as no black on their fins so I think I have it right this time. Anyway watching them eat, Lemon is voracious and was definitely getting too much of the food. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to get rid of my coloured water after I've done the course of Protozin, it doesn't say to do any water changes on the container. Any ideas?
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Jan 4, 2015 05:33
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Thalamas posted:Copper will kill your snails. I've got a snail trap in the tank right now hoping to nab the stragglers and have fished out the big ones already, definitely going to get out as many as I can before I dose the tank. Since I have a snail tank already I can always repopulate later but I do want to minimise rotten dead snails. I'm thinking about taking the wood out too so that it doesn't soak up copper and poison everything later on. There is definitely something either fluffy or slimy visible at the base of the dorsal fin of one fish so I'm keen to stop it in its tracks before it gets worse. Better to get this done now before the snails get entrenched and their numbers build up, and before I get any corys; I'm trying to work out the logistics of not tainting all my hoses and equipment with copper since I don't have old or spare stuff to use. Might look at whether Cuprisorb or similar is available to protect any future sensitive livestock, anyone tried it? Of the 13 baby fish that I started with, I was able to count 10 of them today, which is two more than I thought I had. Three or four of them are very small and I would say underdeveloped compared to the others and most likely I just hadn't been counting them all before. One of the small ones and one slightly bigger one either have deformed tails or have very tightly clamped fins. I really shouldn't be surprised if I have some runty fish, I wasn't expecting so many of them to still be alive after this long.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:31
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SynthOrange posted:If the fish are dead, the tank's not ready. Accidentally nearly used this method to test a tank yesterday. I set up a new tank, used an existing sponge filter but when some fry were moved across, they went limp after a couple of minutes of seemingly normal activity. Managed to resuscitate them by quickly getting them back to their old tank; my best guess is that the dose rate on the bottle of the new dechlorinator I used isn't adequate for my water. Always monitor your fish/tank after major changes!
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Jan 7, 2015 02:05
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Looks like my "deformed" fish fry were just unhappy about being bossed around by their bigger siblings. All the ones who had tiny cramped up or pointy tails look completely normal now they are in their own separate tank, although they are still very runty compared to the bigger ones. Could be they were just not getting access to the food before, who knows? I hope they do grow to a proper size and aren't stunted for life. I've had one of the adult rosy barbs stop eating and hide a lot for a few days now. She's from the shop bought batch, and the previous ones that have already died went the same way, usually overnight or within 36 hours whereas this one is fighting it longer. While she was still eating she bloated up a little bit but went down again; I still don't know if this was eggs or actual bloating since from what I've read a fish with dropsy can go up and down a few times before it dies, giving you false hope that it will survive. I don't have anything antibiotic to try if it is a bacterial internal infection causing dropsy. But she isn't bloated right now, and I read somewhere that some protozoan parasites like costia can cause the hiding/off their food symptoms, so I've moved the sick fish into a hospital tank to throw Protozin at her since thats the only medication I have. She has been breathing fast I think, so it could actually be something in her gills but it feels like I'm stabbing in the dark. Better than doing nothing. I hope she doesn't die because that will leave me with one female and three males which is not a good mix. She hasn't really gotten worse or better since she's been isolated so perhaps she'll pull through. The other surviving shop-bought fish has a little chunk missing near his dorsal fin, not really sure how he got it but it looks clean and I've painted a little betadine on it in hope that it stops it from getting infected. It doesn't seem to bother him at all. Could be just from fighting between the males in the tank, although I haven't really seen much earnest aggression. They're all a lot more confident and friendly and I got some nudges and nips on my arm (trying to eat my freckles) while I was replanting some of the plants they'd pulled up today. Pretty funny to watch them ripping off and eating leaves, and uprooting things. They seem to love the Hydrilla the most. I've ordered some cherry shrimp to go in the new nano tank. Initially I was thinking of growing out my fry in with the shrimps but I think it will be too crowded in there. After the dechlorinator debacle I have tested that tank with a snail and a single fry and they are doing fine now so I think it's ready. I've got some rocks and moss in there but I'd like to have a twig wrapped in moss too to give the shrimp some surfaces at different levels in the tank. I found some nice dead sticks on my jacaranda tree but I'm not sure if they'll be aquarium safe. I can't find anything online about jacaranda toxicity apart from that rabbits have safely eaten the flowers before, but that doesn't tell me much. They have kind of a nasty smell to them so I'm not sure that I want to use them. Apparently dead oak leaves are good for shrimp and oak twigs can be used as is without needing to remove the bark, so I went for a drive to gather some; didn't find any particularly nice looking ones but I might be able to use them for something. Here's the tank so far:  I'd like to lean the stick toward the back but maybe have a branch that juts to the front with moss, maybe fissidens, on it. Not sure that the round sponge filter will stay in there permanently, for now I'm just using it to seed the tank. I've got some black plastic mesh so maybe a moss wall on the back of the tank could work too, although that could be more trouble than it's worth.
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Jan 9, 2015 16:36
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TollTheHounds posted:Is this just something everyone with an open tank deals with? Is our place just insanely dusty? I often see cat hair floating around in my closed top tank let alone my open one. I had a skimmer attachment kind of like this:  which did an okay job of preventing surface scum from building up, not sure if you'd be able adapt something like that to your filter?
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Jan 10, 2015 07:50
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Tonight I saw my biggest rosy barb fry attempting to bite the eye stalks off of some poor ramshorn snail. He's been in full hunter mode and eating every worm that comes out of the gravel so snails eyes are a lot like worms right? I haven't been able to tell if he successfully bit anything off since the snails have pulled their heads in and haven't come out again. If so I wonder if snail eyes will grow back
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Jan 13, 2015 13:06
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It sounds like a bacterial layer which I've only ever seen happen on my manky neglected infusoria jar. You sure you couldn't have a t piece from your filter inlet with one end going to the surface? Something like this product might work https://youtube.com/watch?v=BZGeZzkh3yI
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Jan 14, 2015 04:05
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candywife posted:I was just thinking about how awesome of a shrimp tank it would make but I already have two fish tanks. Someone please talk me out of going back and getting it... I bought a little tank thinking I'd use it for a fry grow out tank and then decided to get some cherry shrimp to go in there as well. I had them posted to me and despite my concern none of them died in the mail, the guy sent me about 30-40 sub-adult shrimp. They all went crazy as soon as they got in the tank, many of them shed their shells and now its 24 hours later they've got their colour back and there are some very intense red ones in the mix. They've settled down a bit but are still really active and fun to watch. Shrimp are awesome! The heater that came with the tank really runs too hot though and I'm lucky I caught it and didn't cook all my shrimp.
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Jan 16, 2015 04:00
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I've had a series of sick fish with similar rubbing, listlessness, loss of appetite, but the only one of mine that got really sick but didn't die is the one that lost scales. They have also had white droppings. So in order the things I tried: Praziquantel for worms/flukes - gill flukes can make them rub and be listless, internal worms can also cause listlessness. This treatment seemed to coincide with half of my fish perking up. Rubbing still continued. Protozin (malachite green, methylene blue and formalin) for protozoan parasites - the fish I was treating with this was doing rapid breathing so I suspected some gill-affecting protozoan. I tried using it at "in-tank strength" but the fish died after the first day, so in theory I did not achieve a theraputic dosage level in time, or it was not parasites. I chose not to treat the whole tank and had a hospital tank. Metronidazole in food, for bacterial infections - the fish ate their medicated food no problems, incidence of white poop has reduced. At this stage rubbing has decreased but one fish lost more scales. I can't tell that the decreased rubbing is associated with any of the medications so far. Protozin - the fish with scale loss also developed an open wound which did not respond to iodine swabbing (possibly due to it being continually bitten through bullying) so I did a 30 min salt + protozin bath, during which I dripped the protozin directly on the wound hoping the methylene blue in it would stick to the exposed tissue and help it heal. I'm hoping a shorter daily bath will give the fish time to recover and de-stress between sessions vs the other fish that died while isolated in the hospital tank. So far he looks less stressed than he was from having iodine swabbed on the wound. Even doing a ton of reading and watching the fish looking for clues the guessing and getting it wrong or seeing no result is a bit disheartening. For a lot of these illnesses you can't tell without getting a sample from the fish and looking at it under a microscope; maybe this is the excuse I need to get a scope? Does anyone do this or do you have fish vets locally? I don't think either of the vets here do fish although I know one of the vets removed a big tumour from a tree frog and the other vet has a turtle.
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Jan 17, 2015 05:50
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My sister picked up some "free tetras" today from someone who was breaking down their tank and felt bad about flushing living fish. She was hoping for some neons but came home with three guppies, a red eye and a hockey stick. The red eye seemed okay but the hockey stick posted himself behind her power head and wouldn't come out, he seemed absolutely terrified. The guppies colored up fine and started hanging around with her white cloud minnows but with five extra fish her tank was way too crowded so of course I've ended up with two more rescue fish (both of the tetras). I could fit more of the same of each in my tank to let them school but for now it will be wait and see; they'll probably catch whatever my sick fish has and die but at least they have more of a chance than if they'd gotten flushed out left in my sister's super crowded tank. I didn't bother quarantining them since my main tank is already a bit diseased but apparently they were surviving in one inch of cloudy turtle poop water so I'm hoping they have strong immune systems.
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Jan 18, 2015 10:39
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