Melanie

Okay, good news. I think I've found someone who will drive them to Spidersweb's house. :bounce:

My lack of a car is making any sort of sending really difficult. If I could get someone to pick them up and drop them at Spidersweb's house, that would work, too.

2 angels, 2 gourami, 6 tetra in one tank. 3 platys in the other.

See, if I had someone to go with me, it wouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't be begging for help on a public forum if I had people who could do this sort of thing for me. :oops: Right now, I have found a pet mover who can move them, but I need someone who would watch them until 15 February when she can move them. The person would have to bring the fish and their packaged-up tanks to: meeting point in wellington, Haywoods turnoff on the upper hutt side on the morning of the 15th feb at 7am.

Is the liquid ban domestic or just international. They're really mean about it on the international flights. I saw a girl get some Xmas snow globes taken off her while boarding. I would hate to lose my fish that way.

I'm flying. I don't think Air NZ is keen on fish moving.

I'll try that pets on the net service. My stuff is going through a depot, unfortunately, so I don't think the fish can come that way. After 2 years living in NZ, couriers remain a mystery to me. I have yet to get a courier to come to my house to pick up anything and when I ask over the phone, they start talking to me as though I've just told them I've sprouted an extra head.

I'm trying to move from Wellington to Hamilton but haven't figured out how to get the fish there. Does anyone know how to move fish? I haven't driven for 2 years so I'm trying to find a service or some way to get the fish to Hamilton without my having to drive. Any suggestions?

His tank is 366 litres and he has discus, some corys (2 I think), one of those big sucker fish, and probably a few other things I've forgotten about. I don't remember what tank lights he has, the problem seems to have been a big old window in his house that didnt have a shade. It now has one. I'll pass this all along to him. I was worried, however, that such a huge water change would set the tank on a cycle and kill his fish. Oh and I'm a real plant person. My tanks are like fish jungles. He never has been one for plants, not sure why. I suggest it to him every now and then, but he never seems keen on it.

A friend has a rather large tank and has recently had a change in his water quality. He has lots of algae on the sides, lots on rocks and the fake plants in his tank--he doesn't have live plants in his tank. And the water is also very cloudy. So far, he added Cycle to his water in case the cloudiness is because of a mini cycle. He changes 10-15% of his water every 2nd week. He also added an algae killer. He also bought a shade to keep sunlight out of the fish room to kill the algae. This was all in the past 48 hours or so and now his water has gotten worse and he now wants to change like 90 percent of it, and/or clean all the gear from the tank and do a 15% water change daily until it clears. He has artesian water with no chemicals. Any suggestions?

Genetic weakness could make the fish more succeptible to disease, but there has got to be some sort of infectuous agent that begins the outbreaks of disease. Otherwise I don't understand how adding a new fish to a tank could set off an outbreak.

The first site I read said to hit it with a fish antibiotic. I hear they're only available through the vet in NZ. I am so tempted to fill my suitcase with Maracyn and Maracyn-II before I come back home from the U.S., but I really don't want to have to attempt to explain to Customs why I felt the need to import half a suitcase of fish antibiotics.

When I kept guppies in the States, we never had a heater and it was fine. However, we had central heat, so the house was never really cold. Before you get more guppies, observe them in the store. A lot of the guppies in the States and in NZ right now have this guppy disease. Visit the shop and watch the fish, then visit again a few days later. If 3/4 of THEIR fish are dead, that's a bad sign. And I just got a heater for cheap at Petland. Petland is a good place to buy heaters, but the conditions in their fish tanks are kind of scary.

I think that we need to make some distinctions here in order to continue intelligently. Before I experienced this new guppy disease, one of the reasons I denied its existence was that nobody has compiled a set list of symptoms. Because of this, every single guppy problem in the book seemed to get labelled "guppy AIDS." Is it possible we're talking about two different things here? (As in, if you're not having a massive die-off, perhaps you don't have this disease in your tanks and are just experiencing a guppy who has genetic deficits?)

My fish, which I know came from the same two sources as yours, were infected with whatever this is. Someone agreed to look after my fish and put mine in with theirs, even though I advised them against it because I'd had problems with the disease. Theirs got it and died within a week. They lost 55 fish in that week, which is abnormal for this person because they'd only lost 7 fish this year until adding my fish to the mix. I think that's about as scientific as you're going to get from me, but if you read the article I linked, the writer managed to infect his healthy fish simply using water from an infected tank. I'm not saying there is no genetic component to it. I'm sure there is. I think that everything Pegasus said here is probably true, but that unlike MS, there's some sort of infectious component that sets things off. I just have no idea what kind of infectious agent it would be. When the onset of the disease began in my tank, I had not added a new fish, any new plants or snails, or anything but water for over 3 months.

I think that everything you've said makes sense, and that there may well be a genetic component to this, but I think there must be some infectious agent present to cause the problems to precipitate. I am not sure where this agent comes from--whether it's from build up in the filters or what--but I don't see how the disease could be strictly genetic given what I've experienced. I also thought the disease was a myth until my fish came down with it. My fish came from two different breeders. I started losing adult fish suddenly, with no apparent discrimination between fish from one breeder or another. Symptoms were thinning, colour loss, and paralysis in the fins leading to crooked swimming. When transferred to another tank with a third breeder's fish, the third breeder's fish, who had never had any problems whatsoever, came down with the same symptoms and began dying. I've been very depressed about the loss of my fish and have done a lot of research. The most articulate and well thought out article I've found on the subject is this one: http://www.ifga.org/articles/disease2.htm Just my two cents. Of course, this explanation does not explain why the fry and young fish seem unaffected by the disease, which is why I think you may be right that there is a genetic component.

I am in USA right now and most of the guppies are so sick that they are being used as feeders. I would look into other countries, but that's just my personal opinion and the USA is a big country so it may not be like that in all areas.

Okay, so if it gets better, that means it was bacterial... What if it's parasites? Are parasites considered bacterial? Is there another treatment for parasites? The fish is swimming immensely better after his treatment. I'm hoping that means he'll recover; he is one of my most attractive.

Also, this site has more than a few possibilities for what this mysterious "Guppy AIDS" really is, and how to treat it. Unfortunately I don't know if there are NZ equivalents to these treatments or not, because the medications mentioned are available only in the U.S.

Yeah, I know... the fabled "guppy AIDS." I haven't added fish, there's no thinning, and the fins aren't rotting away. I just have a fish that's having trouble swimming. Can anyone answer this for me: What is melafix? Does it treat things like this, or is there a better treatment?

My favourite male guppy is swimming funny. It is almost as though he stands vertically in the tank. For some reason I keep thining parasites because he has that "shimmy" going on. I have him isolated right now. If I were back home, I'd use Marcyn II. Is there an equivalent here? I'm treating with melafix, but the bottle really doesn't say what melafix is supposed to treat other than wounds, so I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing.

My partner figured it out. There's a little sliding thing that can put it on high, low, or, apparently, off... Fixed now. Thanks for your concern.

It's a Micron filter. I usually don't change much water and things are usually fine. I'm worried because I had a fish looking ill yesterday and figured changing a couple buckets would be the way to go. When I was done changing I noticed the filter wasn't doing its job.

I think my filter in my big (10 gallon) fish tank has stopped working, but I'm not sure. I just cleaned it out but it's still going pretty weakly in my opinion. Any suggestions? Is there a way I can tell if it's going well enough to sustain my fish for the rest of the month until their fish sitter comes and gets them? (I'm going out of the country.) I really can't afford to buy anything else (ie a new filter) because I'm leaving so soon and kind of need to eat while I'm away, but their tank is looking really mucky already even though I changed the water yesterday. Will changing the water more frequently hurt or help?

That made me laugh. Ironically, this all happened right after a water change. My only casualty seems to be one tetra; the guppy ripped his tail off and the other tetras rejected him. I put him in with the guppy fry and he's got about half of a new tail grown now.