whetu

I'm glad to hear your BNs & Clowns were ok, Wok. If my initial attempt with the recommended dose doesn't work I will try double-dosing and see what happens.

I was deliberately avoiding using bleach on the plastic tubing - does anyone know if hydrogen peroxide will damage plastic? And if I used it to disinfect the wood, does it stay in the porous wood and leach into the water? So many questions! :oops:

I think I will try squirting the Flourish Excel straight onto the algae as you suggest. I am using a syringe to measure it anyway, so it should be easy enough just to reach in and squirt it onto the visible stuff. Also that way I will be able to see whether it is working. I will let you know how it goes.

Hmmm... the interesting thing is that my tank has literally only been started since 5 May. Everything was either new or sterilised before I put it in - so the theory about high nitrate levels simply can't be the case. Also I have very few fish in the tank. During the cycling process the ammonia and nitrites barely registered on my test kits. I'm also running 2 x Eheim pro II filters on the tank so I really don't think water quality can be a factor in my problem.

Those are stunning fish. Yes, another admirer who can't contribute any info to the thread, but just wants to admire your fish! :lol:

Hi all, I used to have BBA in my tank. Lesson to all: sterilise new plants & decor when importing them from an unknown tank! When I moved at the beginning of May I did a HUGE breakdown of my tank to try to get rid of the BBA. I sterilised everything I could - boiled rocks & wood (then microwaved the wood as well!), boiled filter media, bleached glass, soaked all plastic components in a strong salt solution overnight and even ran hot, very salty water through my filters. I stripped out and threw away my entire substrate and all my plants (some of which I had had for many years). It was a heart-breaking experience and very frightening as I knew I was going to have to put my whole tank through an entirely new start-up phase. The good news is my tank has cycled fully without any apparent stress on my little fishy friends, and some wonderful, kind people from this forum gave me some trimmings from their plants which are now becoming nicely established. The bad news: The BBA is coming back! I have noticed it on my filter intake (which I immediately removed, salted and scrubbed) and a couple of days ago I noticed tiny tufts on some rocks and driftwood (yes, the same ones I boiled & microwaved!) Before this horrible stuff gets fully established again, how can I conquer it? I have some Flourish Excel... can anyone help me through a step-by-step process for using it to conquer the BBA? The fish in the tank right now are: - gold & cherry barbs - a pair of bristlenose catfish - clown loaches (5 - 7 years old - not tiny babies) I have other fish currently in a Q-tank but I'm in no hurry to transfer them over so I will wait until the BBA is beaten before I do that! I know loaches can be very sensitive to chemicals in the water, and the bottle says DO NOT OVERDOSE! (in caps, with exclamation mark!) What do I do?

Yeah after doing some more reading on the subject, I think I am going to have to euthanase my poor little neons. Apparently the disease can spread easily to any other fish in the tank and is very hard to cure (as I have found). Looks like it's goodnight little neons

I went to the Mt Eden store last night and it was madness! Millions of people queueing to get in, then once you got in you could barely move for the crowds. The specials were worth it though. The whole buy-2-get-1-free on fish & plants, plus whatever specials were already on, plus 20% off in addition to any existing specials. I spent $133 of which $110 was vouchers (I always ask for vouchers for my birthday). so for $23 I got: 350ml flourish excel 9 cardinal tetras 3 cherry barbs 3 gold barbs 1 siamese fighter fish (for my partner) 1 small clown loach 3 amazon sword plants 1 large java fern Best bit of shopping I've done in a long time :bounce:

Hi all, I have three neon tetras in my tank that aren't doing very well - they have cotton mouth I have tried all kinds of meds but they haven't worked. I think the water temperature might be too warm for the poor little neons, but I need to keep it warm because of the clown loaches. Anyway, I was thinking of getting cardinal tetras - I have heard they are hardier and will tolerate warmer temperatures. Is this true? Also, if I put the cardinals in the same tank as the neons, will the cotton mouth fungus spread and infect the cardinals as well? This is a 220 litre planted community tank with the unfortunate neons, a school each of gold barbs and cherry barbs, five clown loaches and a pair of bristlenoses. The tank is mature and I use two Eheim pro II filters on it so it is thoroughly over-filtered and the water quality is excellent. I am an experienced fish-keeper (so will do all the right quarantine/acclimatisation stuff) but am not experienced with tetras! Please help!

Are you looking for the standard white filter floss? By that I mean the stuff that looks a bit like cotton-wool. In which case you can get it from a pet store.

I have a spare terracotta pot if anyone wants it (free to a good bristlenose home). You would need to pick it up from Avondale. Please pm me if interested. This is a general invitation so if Manmeet doesn't want it, others are welcome.

Ditto to Caper's post. It's always sad to have to 'dispose' of a fish. You did the right thing. And hopefully you'll be very quick to notice any similar changes to any other fish. Actually it really helped me to see the pic - I will be keeping a very close eye on my own gold barbs and looking out for any of those symptoms!

Olly, does your water change if you leave it in a container to settle for a few hours? Sometimes just leaving it in a bucket (ideally with an airstone in it) can settle the pH so it is similar each time you piut it in the tank. It might be worth giving it a try - at least by experimenting you might get some more clues about the cause of your pH swings. Also, sometimes just leaving the tap to run for a while before drawing the water can settle the pH a bit. I was told (by my local water engineer) that water that has been sitting in concrete pipes will have a higher pH but after it has run for a few minutes you start getting fresh water from the mains and it might have a lower pH. I'm just repeating what he said so I cannot back it up... I think his logic may have some holes in it, so to speak :-?

By the way, I have been using my eheim with the cheap filter material for several years now, and have had no problems (not that I would expect to). I don't use any carbon in the filter. I have carbon in reserve just in case I ever have to use it in an emergency - if I quickly had to remove some nasty chemicals from the water or remove some meds or something - but this has never happened so the carbon is still nice and dry in the drawer! I have two eheim filters running on my 220 litre tank (overkill I know). They are set up as follows (top down): Filter #1: cheap white floss genuine eheim ehfi substrat (looks like white rocks or kitty litter) genuine eheim blue sponge genuine eheim ehfi mech (looks like macaroni tubes) Filter #2: cheap white floss genuine eheim stuff (looks like little white marbles) genuine eheim blue sponge genuine eheim ehfi mech Remember the water passes through the filter from the bottom up, so the coarse stuff goes in the bottom and the fine filter wool in the top. I only ever replace the white layer. The rest just get rinsed out and put back into the filter. Seems to work fine for me.

Yep - that's the same stuff I'm using at the moment - way cheaper than the authentic eheim stuff. But there is an even cheaper option! Go to a fabric/craft shop (like Spotlight) and buy the stuff they use for inside quilts. It is EXACTLY the same stuff and costs a fraction of the price. You buy it by the metre so you can get a year's supply for a few dollars! As for whether the authentic ehaim stuff is any better than the cheap stuff - yes it may well be. The eheim white floss is a different texture to the cheap stuff. It's a bit coarser so it lasts longer and you can rinse and re-use it. The cheap stuff is single use only. My only real concern would be if by using the cheap stuff you are causing the filter motor to work harder, and thereby shortening the life of the filter. However, running it with clogged filter media would cause more resistance than that, so IMO it shouldn't be a problem.

Hmmm, looking at the pic of your sick fish and reading the link about neon tetra disease, it definitely seems to be the same thing, doesn't it? The curved spine, fin rot, muscle wastage and pale colouration all fit the description. I hope you can find it in your heart to put the poor little fish out of its misery. If you can't bring yourself to cut its head off, there is a thread here somewhere about using clove oil to euthanase fish. And it looks like you should probably do a thorough gravel vac and water change, and see if you can maintain good water quality to prevent other fish from getting this disease. Good luck.

For a tank that size,you may be best to get several 'smaller' lids rather than one big one. That way you can just remove a section of lid if you want to feed/reach into the tank, rather than having to remove the lights and lift the whole heavy glass sheet. Sorry RochelleMay I seem to be posting in all your threads saying "I can't help but I'll tell you what you should do..." :oops:

Aha! Excellent outcome, Dubbo! The white layer in the eheim is the one that removes the very fine material that causes the murky look, so it should work much better now you have replaced it. Personally I don't use the eheim-branded white filers (they are too expensive and I find I don't replace them often enough because I'm too stingy!) I just use normal white filter wool and cut it to fit.

Yeah sorry, didn't explain myself very well. I meant gravel vaccing will not disturb the tank any more than it is already disturbed - I think a gravel vac is a good idea to pick up any settled debris.

The reason we don't have a lot of plants from other countries is that we live on a bunch of isolated islands. As a result we have unique plant and fish species of our own, and if introduced plants were to get loose in our waterways they would out-compete native plants, and cause a lot of problems. This has already happened often in the past, and we are trying to make sure it doesn't happen any more (although we still have problems with people importing plants illegally). I think it's a small price to pay - so we miss out on a few exotic, quirky plants. I'm happy to live in a country where we have our own unique species still thriving. Sorry about the lecture. :oops:

An eheim pro II should do a good job of clearing the water. I just want to clarify a few things here - Is the tank stocked with plants and fish? Or is it just water and gravel? Did the filter come with the tank? Do you know what media is in it and when it was last cleaned? If the tank is just gravel and water, then you can do as much water changing and gravel vaccing as you like. If it has plants and fish, you will need to be more careful about the cycling. But if it's got that murky during the move it's likely the plants have all been uprooted and the gravel well stirred anyway, so gravel vaccing is unlikely to make much difference. If the filter came with the setup, it may either have the wrong filter media, or the media may be incorrectly installed, or it may already be so full of gunk that you might be blowing more murk into the water through the filter. Again, if your tank is fully stocked with fish and you choose to clean the filter, you may find that you set off a cycle. But if the filter is already all clogged up, you may be going through a cycle anyway so keep an eye on everything. I hope that helps. If any of that doesn't make sense, please feel free to ask more questions. The kind folks here will be happy to take you through the setup process step by step and help you get everything looking great!

Although you would need a light if you wanted to grow plants - in which case a desk lamp would still do the job - especially if you put one of those compact fluoro power-saving bulbs in it. And in that case it would use only a tiny bit of power a day. The most expensive thing out of all of this will probably be the 10 minutes every hour you're going to spend gazing into the tank when you should be working! :lol:

Sounds like a good experiment to me. I will be interested to see the results. By the way, how much did your meter cost you at Bunnings? I'm thinking it might be a good thing to have...

The key message is: Make sure you have good, tight-fitting tank lids! If there is a lot of evaporation from your tanks, then that will be adding to your condensation problem. Whether you use the dehumidifier or not, make sure your tanks are nicely sealed.

You should probably also record the ambient temperature of the room while you are doing the experiment. After all, it's likely to get colder each week as we head deeper into winter so the experiment might not be valid.