sharn

looks like little patches of fungus to me, my golds got spots that looked like that. i wouldnt think it would be whitespot as youd have more as the days go by. HITH would be indented too so i doubt it would be that. id see if it gets worse, up those water changes and if nothing happens it might be time to pull out the big (and sometimes lethal with rams ) guns. maybe topical applications of meth blue if it is fungus?

this aint no five minute job lol, youd understand if you saw all those tanks good luck with your fishies, simply discus had some good articles on hex, maybe print them off along with this thread to show the vet that you do actually need it

how long did you treat it for? i find using heat and salt works best for me, i prefer the natural method as meds stress fish. i upped the temp to 30C, and added salt at 1tbsp per 10gal/40L as i have scaleless fish, it was actually a bit under that, probably around 1tbsp per 60L. i did that for the first week, then dropped the temp to 29C the second week and back to 27C the next week, never saw it again after that whitespot needs to be treated for a longish time as when the cysts fall off they break open which is when you kill it, any unhatched cysts will just re-infect the tank again. they cant live over a certain temperature too. just remember if you use salt that only replace what you take out as salt wont evaporate ie 40L replace 1tbsp of salt. if you go with the meds i would follow directions but keep it up for at least a week and a half.

ill bet half my money (gotta be safe ya know lol) it wasnt worms. if these worms were suspended in the water it would have most likely been planaria which is caused by over feeding or bad water quality. planaria isnt harmful, just unsightly and you can lessen the numbers by good gravel vacumns and greatly reducing the amount of food offered. they are very small and white, if ya do a google you should find some pics. fish worms arent easy to spot unless its callimanus which hangs out their bottoms. intestinal worms often make the fish look overly fat (but then it could just be obese) or very skinny even though the fish is eating. i dont know of any worms that show themselves outside the body other than the above. if the worms were attatched to the fish maybe it could be anchor worms, not sure if you can see body flukes or not but that may also be a option? i dont know about this cure-ex is it still available for retail sales? if not i would assume it has been banned as alot of people used our valuable fish wormers to make drugs, hence them being taken off the market. i would hesitate to use any wormers at the moment unless you can positively diagnose the tank with it, meds are stressful and no need to dose for something that aint there aye p.s. if you see her again tell her shes welcome to come along to the fish meeting and we should be able to help her out, if she likes i could even come look at her tank. oh and btw, has anyone been interested in the club? i havent had any calls and i dont want to have to give up after all the hard work was done :bounce:

theres probably quite a few. two that come to mind is the beginnings of fungus or aeromonas, aeromonas causes little white bump things but from what ive read it works quick and basically eats away at the fish. see this topic here- http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewt ... 42&start=0 it has some pictures of a fish with suspected aeromonas, im not up on illnesses though sorry. one other thing it might be is lympho? that makes little white cysts i think. what makes you think it isnt whitespot? is it larger or something?

phew! so it doesnt matter that not all of the bottom of the tank is supported? not even all the edging is. it seems that the glass is only pushing on the ends of the rubber strips on the beams, so i can sort of push it around in the middle. just for piece of mind im going to knock some stuff under there, it might be ok but ill still stress :lol:

looking good

well if you are starting with fish under 8cm i think you should go for BB, but in saying that i dont advise it for your first tank (starting with small fish). BB tanks are able to be kept so much cleaner and while at first i thought they were ugly it really shows the discus off because you have nothing to look at other than them, maybe a nice piece of driftwood and a few potted plants. i have a planted discus tank and im itching to set up a BB just to see what the differences are. with a planted tank it really is hard to keep it ultra clean like a BB because of all the nooks and crannies poop gets into etc. i would not adivse you to get small discus, contact ronnie, he has some really good stock at sizes that would be good to start with and very reasonably priced too which is a bonus. dont buy from LFS, most fish at LFS arent in great health anyway and you want to make sure theyre super healthy for your starting ones. it will really help that much more to have healthy stock you dont need to grow up (growing up consisits of major water changes, ronnie does 80% twice daily on his!!!). looking back at it now if i wasnt so stubborn i would have gone with BB for starters, that way you can get used to keeping them and then go onto planted which can be a little harder. now with metro, it is a really handy thing to have on hand. hex is present in all discus but normally only takes over when they get stressed or have bad water conditions, it makes them have white stringy poop and it wont go away by itself. the most effective way to get it to them if they get sick is by food, that way itll go straight to their gut but you can dose it in the water, obviously not as effective though. alot of people treat any new discus they get with it even if they show no signs (in quarentine and something you will need to look into). alot of canisters are around, eheim are a really really good brand and if you can get it do so! the only downside of buying second hand is you have no warrenty, it might be a little noisier than brand new cause its been used etc etc. you need to completely sterilise the whole thing before it comes into contact with your tank. it would be advisable to either get yourself kits (so much handier) or get your water tested at a LFS, i didnt know we had really soft water and i was getting ph swings from low kh and it was upsetting my discus. theyre not as picky as everyone thinks about water quality, its stability thats the key unless you want to breed also if you buy kits then you can moniter the cycle. i would get ammonia, nitrite (you should have 0 for both readings, anything else is really bad) nitrate (as low as possible, i say anything over 20 you need to do a water change, checking your nitrites will tell you if you need to do one), ph and if your water is very soft kh and gh kits. dont bother getting kh and gh if the pet shop tells you its fine, you want a kh and gh of at least 3 degrees hardness (times by 17.9 to get ppm) IMO. hope this helps p.s. you do know about cycling right?

ok guys, need a bit of help on my tank, i didnt think about it when i broke it down a few months ago (yes, ive been kicking myself) so i figure i need to fix it. the stand is metal and basically like this -- |__|__|__|__| (add in full top lines). the two end bars are obviuosly the end of the tank with the middle three being beam type things, on top of the beams and around some parts of the edge of the tank are rubber strips. this has be concerned because its a 220L tank and none of the bottom is equally pressured (not sure how to put it). basically theres 4 large sqaures under the tank along with a fair amount of the edges that dont have any support. here are some pics to try and give you a idea of what i mean http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/ ... 0_5285.jpg http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/ ... 0_5284.jpg http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/ ... 0_5282.jpg im thinking get some polystyrene, a thin layer, put that under and jam a fair amount of wood in the gaps (i can put my fingers into the edging, its about 1cm or so) to try and reinforce it a bit more, the last thing i need is the tank cracking and everything going thru the bottom!!!??? any ideas of what i can do? breaking the tank down is not an option cause it would be just too hard to get all the sand out with the aquatic mix too so i could lift it up.

i wouldnt bother about putting a UG filter in, theyre hard to look after unless you really know what your doing. stick with internals or externals, so much easier IMO

ok, thats around my size, youd be able to fit five in properly, pushing six with no other fish apart from a few small ones that dont really add to the bio load. i have no experience with those filters on those tanks, theyre small so wouldnt hold much media other than a few cartridges maybe and not sure how my LPH which is what you need to look at, dont trust it when it says 'for tanks up to 200L' cause every tank has specific requirements for the different stocking and fish. i would definatly look at getting another canister. bent spines are normally just a defomity from bad genes etc, tb is pretty hard out, they normally get sores i think. i have no other advice for you other than to READ READ READ and read some more about discus, make sure you have access to metro or something to treat hex with (youll find more about that in your readings) as its pretty common. with a tank that size and fish over 6-8cm your wanting to do water changes at least every 2-3 days of 30%, if you can do 50% a day go for it! do remember other fish may not like those water changes but discus love it as long as its got the same params as the tank water. you will quickly find you need to buy a aging bin/barrel. any fish smaller than 6-8 cm i wouldnt buy if your wanting to put them into a normal tank as youd want to grow them out a bit more, get the biggest you can afford (healthiest too). people make the mistake (me included) of buying babies cause theyre cheaper, raising them is hard and it doesnt always work out. start with ones at least 10cm (not including tail!) and you should find it alot easier. if you would like me to put you onto a good breeder in aucks chuck me a pm

welcome to the forums!! discus are IMO alot harder to care for maintenance wise compared to say your average community tank, they need very very clean water. i would advise you to get the biggest tank you can afford, no need for it to be a flash tank but the equipment must be of good quality. i would also work your way up to discus, fighters are much easier to care for than discus, discus arent fraglie fish if you keep their water nice but they aint called 'the king of the aquarium' for nothing :lol: i would suggest going with a community tank with your female bettas and other tankmates for starters, discus need at least 40L per adult and overstocking will see you upping your water changes (i normally do 30% every 2-3 days on my normal discus tank). fighters dont need much room but theyd prefer more than a glass id imagine. go with the jebo, 90L more is a fair amount and larger bodies are easier to keep stable. im not too sure how well those filters on those tanks work tho so you may need to look at getting another, ive never had flash tanks like that. you can always work your way up the scale with fish. in the end what fish you want to keep is up to you but be prepared to put alot more effort in for discus if you go that way, i advise you read up on www.simplydiscus.com as that has a fair amount of good stuff. you pay for their prettyness by the work you put in p.s. might want to upgrade goldfish tank, messy buggers that can reach 30cm long depending on species, most grow averagly large (might be time to build that pond huh) :lol:

ok, will get onto that tomorrow, i need a account name tho. p.s. antwan is away for the week i think so i dont know if he will be able to get the money to you in time

wow 250! what size were they? welcome to the FNZAS website

what your worming for depends on what you want to use but drontal is reccomended as a all round for tape worm and something else i think it was. luke gave me some febendazole for my angel with callimanus which needs to be fed (doing that now) but there was something you can put in the water that would do the trick better, only problem is its REALLY hard to get but i cant remember what it was called lol.

id be worried about barbie hair leaching into the water? also flashing LEDs might stress some fish? not sure but just thought id ask

i wouldnt imagine too well considering blue had his discus go funky (it was your discus aye blue) when he double dosed. i think he wrote something in the plant section about it. if you were to double dose i would probably take your fish out just to be sure

http://www.aquariaplants.com/plantdeficiencies.htm is pretty good i thought

i have sand in two of my tanks i got from bunnings/benchmark. its a medium-dark grey and quite fine. it hasnt had any effect on my water params as i had it in my axolotl tank for 6 months before i used it in anything else just to see if it would harden the water (itd be a good thing in my area haha). the sand was plasterers sand and was the finest and least sharp looking they had. 5 bucks for a 20kg bag or something like that, it is pretty dirty tho so i put it in a pillow case to wash then baked it just to be sure

not being sad or anything but reading is nothing compared to experience, you might read for years and keep every other species of plec out there but these are individual fish with individual needs, they will be highly stressed from shipping and you could run into problems you cant get help with, forums can only do so much but its the experience of keeping them in real life that counts, especially if you want to breed! if they were that easy to breed the market would get flooded with them. like i said, not being mean or rude but id hate for you to go to all the trouble to get yourself some and then have em die, but anyway, from what ive read your moving to england, maybe you can get some there

well if its actually in the water and not stuck to something i dont think there are any fish that would be able to solve that cause they would have to be filter feeders id imagine. algae is caused by excess nutrients and theres alot of them so its a bit of a mission finding out which one is causing you grief. i think you should try put some more plants in to attempt to get them to absorb the nutrients before the algae does

they are really cool fish, id love to own one but i think theyd eat my rummies in one tank and in the other itd get nailed by my oscar in the other

it could very well be alot of other things but it is pretty common. depends on the type of worms, im not very familiar with anything other than cammilanus (the worms that hang out their bottoms) so wouldnt know what to use to treat them sorry

yeah i know, went to another person i know. she was a right monster, she was definatly one of those fish that only mixes with water, and dont like gravel too much lol (bet you noticed her decorating too haha) :lol:

bringing in bulk would cut down prices in the long run, you could probably bring in 30 odd for the same price as 10 im assuming