sharn

i use a 40L bin for my small hospital tank- its great because alot of meds are based on 10 gallons (which is roughly 40L) when you are using american meds or using american sites for dosing info.

yes they do IME, mine flipped back up the right way within 5-10 seconds from memory. i netted him out of the bath, put him back in the tank and he seemed stunned for a bit then just swam off like normal. im not sure how long its supposed to take them to roll back over but you wouldnt want it to be too long

yep, its really scary to watch a fish you care about roll over like its dead

found this on a google- you will probably need to convert the measurements but that isnt too hard. you normally need a fair amount of salt anyway and a scale that measures grams is pretty cheap http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q= ... arch&meta= http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q= ... fish&meta=

just checking mystic :lol: im unsure exactly what type of vitamins to use, i have read of the womens (no mention of mens vitamins for some reason?) once a days being used on the discus forums. i beleive discusguru has experience with adding human vitamins- might be worth pming him? im not sure if certain minerals/vitamins will be harmful to fish in the quanitities the pills contain so its best to be safe than sorry. i know what ya mean bout chicken livers- theyre really watery so they do mess up your recipie. i used them once and i wont use them again :lol:

how old is she? really old fish can struggle with fighting off nasties just like old humans can

plasterers sand is the stuff i use too, i got a 20kg bag from benchmark for 5 bucks. it was pretty dirty though so needed a good wash. my cories love it, they really get their barbells down into it and they look so cute with their heads down ploughing thru the sand :lol:

all you have to do is make up your own homemade recipie (hundreds of variations, most have fresh fish/beefheart/vegie base) and then find the info on how much med to add per x amount grams/kilo/whatever of food. i always ignore the x amount per 1kg of fish (cause its not like im gonna take a sick fish out of the tank to lie it on my scales to weigh it) :lol:

my sharks tail goes clear when its sleeping or when it is overly stressed

did you do anything to it other than get the seeds out and cut it up like you would eat it? also i wonder what the diff colours would do. paprika is made out of red capsicum isnt it? paprika is often used to bring out the reds in fish so i wonder if the green/yellow/orange would do the same?

thats a very interesting mix she has there- some of the nastiest and some of the nicest fish. it will be interesting to see how they get on, does she have any dividers/other tanks on hand just incase?

i have read of mango and capsicum being used but havent fed it myself- has anyone given those two a go?

you dont mean live fish do ya guys? if his HITH is healing i would hold off on the meds for now unless that bit above his eye continues to get worse (i obviously dont know how bad it is). as you know a good well rounded diet (human multivitamins in the food work wonders) and super clean water often clears up all but the most persistant HITH. it can be a very slow process though and may take months for the holes to fill in, if it was pretty bad you can expect some lasting scars. you guys use the homemade recipies for your O dont you? perhaps mix up the sev his own batch full of goodies and vitamins and feed that along with the above foods mentioned?

i use (and this is the formula that is most commonly reccomended in my readings on the net) 1TBS per 20L for tanks without sensitive fish (plecos, clown loaches, BGK, discus, some tetras etc) and 1TBS per 40L for fish with sensitive fish. i rarely ever use salt anymore though. this dosage is for scrapes, to help combat fungus (wont cure fungus by itself though), helps to combat a few other external problems too (salt helps stimulate slime coating etc). you add it to the tank, only replace what you take out with water changes and when you want to discontinue using salt you just w/c it out. salt will hurt your plants though so if you have live plants you may not want to use salt. i am unsure what dosage to use for a short term or longer term bath (how long do you mean?). i think when you do the short term bath you want the fish to roll over and then transfer them back into fresh water. the only time i did a salt bath it took around 8 minutes for the fish to roll. i frequent alot of overseas forums and if it doesnt require complete and total accuracy i just times the gallons by four. there are a few converters around too.

potassium permanganate is also known as condys crystals. in short it is risky to your fish, extreme caution must be used but it will work well if used properly to treat certain illnesses (though other meds may be easier to use and work better just harder to obtain). i would not advise dosing your tank with PP just to kill snails cause it wont just kill them- it will kill your bio filter too (i removed media from filters before dosing). PP is used as luke said to get rid of the nasties off plants/decor going into tanks that has been used in other tanks, you want the water to be a light pink for treating plants. people also use it to clean out tanks/equipment before use again it is an oxidiser i beleive and is often used for treating fish but i class it is a very risky med even though i have had great experiences and results when using it. it basically eats the nasties (used for external parasites) off your fish but if the mix is too strong or it is in contact with the fish for a prolonged period it will start to eat away at the gills, skin etc of the fish. it is very easy to burn your fish, a dose higher than 4ppm is considered risky and you should expect a good amount of damage to be done. when i treated my discus with PP (3ppm for four and a half hours) i sat by the 40L bin i was using as the hospital that whole time. i got up twice to get something to eat and go toilet. when i was researching the use of PP it was always over stressed DO NOT LEAVE YOUR FISH WHILST TREATING. the problems that i read about always occured because the person had left their fish to go and do something and was not there to administer the 'antidote' (hydrogen peroxide) to the water to neutralise it (i have been told this is impossible but i can do a pictorial of how it neutralises it over a period of ten minutes if anyone wants) sorry for the long ramble :oops:

methylene blue (sp). very readily available- Wunder (the people that make that tonic you have) do one, its 3% i think. my bottle cost me 6 dollars so its affordable and goes a long way

i would seperate her and try to treat her/euthanaise her. there arent any known cures for dropsy but now and again you hear of people who cure it. i think dropsy only becomes contagious if the other fish pick at the fish or have contact with the corpse (cause thats when any fluids or whatevers contagious would come out)

you can apply meth blue straight to the fungus if you wish with a fresh cotton tip (one of those ear cleaner things) if you like. i think you might have to be careful not to get it on the eye though (not sure what it would do to it)

some meds cant be fed though, like formalin, potassium permanganate etc. i wish we could buy medicated foods here, ive read about a few of them and they sound awesome, so much easier than measuring out your own mixes

woah! a salt water rock pool! awesome!

i dont worry about them. i have a few ramshorns in my bare bottom discus tank that came in with the amazon i have potted in there but they arent a problem, i suspect the lack of food for them is a contributer

i pulled it apart and the seals look as new, they are only five months old. we didnt have any vaseline (i used it all up when i put some backings on my tanks a while back) so i tried the cardboard under the clamps and its fixed it- thanks quack its very easy to push the clamps into the locked position, there was very little resistance so it wasnt very tight so the cardboard does the trick. i will replace it every cleaning so it doesnt compress too much and start leaking again

no carbon on my end either and i rarely use it to remove meds (water change, water change, water change). carbon can mask certain smells that are a sign somethings not right that you would normally want to know about and then fix

and in the wild you have often have hundreds of thousands of litres of water passing down the rivers they live in per second- in a closed enviroment it builds up quickly. my tanks arent so clean theyre sterile but the water is maintained and large waste filtered out or removed manually

pop eye is bacterial, it can just happen out of the blue or can result from a knock or scratch which gets icky. its not contagious as far as i know i cured the beginnings of popeye in my male apisto with furan-2. i didnt know it did popeye but it was the only thing i had on hand that did internal bacteria and it worked wonderfully. a light dose of epsom salts can help too to releive the pressure