jolliolli

does look a bit like finrot, as conch as said waterchanges and furan-2 (i;ve had good success with this, melafix i've found to be crap). If your tank is large you would be best to fish in a hospital tank as furan-2 is expensive to use in large quantities. I don't think temp would be an issue for the neons either, you hear on forums all the time about neons not tolerating high water temps but i've never had a problem, i've neons and cardinals in my discus tank which runs at 29 degrees

not some sort of isopod attached to the fish?

do you have a pic, might be a bit easier to see what could be wrong with him

unfortunately imported dwarf gouramis just seem to be dying of unexplained illnesses. if you do a search on the site you'll see many ppl (myself included) have lost dwarf gouramis to unexplained mystery illnesses. You mention white spots, is the gourami scratching at all? do the pieces of fins have white fluffy growth?

How hard is it to get caulerpa in auckland, i don't see it for sale in chch

give the money to me, that will solve all your problems .

If gill flukes you shouldn't see any white spots (at least i didn't observe any in mine when they contracted them)

so the normal 'red sea max' would also be fine with ro/di water?

are you using pro salt or normal red sea max salt conch? I use the red sea max 'normal' salt and mix to the directions to get 1.025, (refractometer) and have never had a problem with the scale being wrong. Normal red sea max salt doesn't seem to have high calcium levels, as i dose my tank with additional calcium and i'm mixing with tap water.

you can ring his shop to get hold of the connectors, pretty sure he sells them there as well as trademe Mikes Fishing 127 Armagh St Christchurch 0-3-365 7146

snapped this today. The torch coral frag is from fmxmatt's colony and it didn't take one of my clowns long to relocate temporarily

try your lfs for polyboxes to ship them in, lots of times you can get them for free as they just chuck them out. the other options is sometimes supermarkets have spare polyboxes as well

i have a pink octospawn coral that had a damaged head during transport, a lot of the tissue was sorte of ripped out. i started freaking out that maybe the damage might cause brown jelly disease etc, but it was fine, i just let it be, the head didn't regrow tissue but didn't harm the coral at all so i'd just leave it and make sure the water quality is good

my female ram ate the eggs , my male was the perfect father though

yes i'm going with the water changes, siphoning and less food. I think while i was away the tank may have been fed more than usual

id like some too, especially the cool blue striped legged ones. they are very cool

Just wondering if anyone is keeping/has kept one of these after seeing one in cookie extremes tank. Im tempted to order one but i've read conflicting reports as to how 'reef safe' they are with regards to invertebrates. Current occupants are Pair of clowns, mandarin fish, lawnmower blenny, yellow tang, cleaner shrimp. Tank size is 400L, are they likely to compete with the mandarin for pods? Also is there any sexual dimorphism with regards to colour etc?

yeah i was thinking about the vodka dosing, i thought i'd give it a week and see if it disappears of its own accord, otherwise its off t the liquor store

imported, but i had had him for 6 months or more along with the other blue (which is still completely healthy). Its kind of annoying that i have no idea why it died as i was away. Although my dad said that both gouramis looked healthy and active a couple of days ago. I wonder if he ate something that blocked him internally, who knows :-?

Got home from being away for 10 days and found my flame gourami dead and being devoured by a bristlenose/SAEs. No ideas as to why, all others in the tank were fine, (disucs, bNs, snakeskin gourami, blue cobalt gourami, cories, neons). Strange as he was fine when i left, no signs of disease or illness and i'd had both the red and the blue gourami for around 6 months with no problems. so chalk this up as another unexplained gourami death, i thought i was going to avoid any unexplained gourami deaths but nope, looks i join the club

I just got back today from spending 10 days away in Auckland, came home tank glass covered in green algae (which i expected) but also a lot of red slime cyano on the sand. About a month earlier i had a problem with cyano which went away when i upgraded my lighting. It was fine when i went away and i even replaced the phosphate absorber so im thinking maybe a bit of excess food in the tank. Plus my xenia has grown massively in the last 10 days and so has one of the acros. let me know how you go yours matt, since our tanks are about the same age i'm always interested to see if you've going through the same issues/cycle as me. BTw i'll have to arrange swapping those frags at some point While i was away i had the pleasure of visiting cookie extremes tank. WOW what an inspiration that was , now it makes me want to completely rescape my tank. His rockwork and coral layout was fantastic and all his fish/corals were super healthy and colouful.

definitely. I would wait several days, the irritation from the ammonia may take several days to go away. If the flashing is lessening instead of increasing then it does sound like it was the ammonia rather than a disease. i would wait a few more days and see how they are going then

really just from the symptoms, water quality was good so i knew that wasn't the issue, no evidence of white spots so that ruled out ich. That pretty much left gill flukes, i treated them for a couple of weeks with the prazi and large water changes and after that the flashing stopped. however during that time i lost the rams, the ruby barbs were the first fish to show signs, and some of the other fish never showed any symptoms. I think ruby barbs/tiger barbs are pretty hardy, i had a pair with 4 1 month old fry and all exhibited symptoms but i didn't lose any of them. The other symptoms i noticed in the rams was refusal of food, hanging out at the bank of the tank and flashing against the rocks and gravel

hmm keep an eye on them, i had a similar problem in my community tank with my ruby barbs flashing, and scratching eventually it spread to my rams and i eventually diagnosed the problem as gill flukes. The barbs never died, but i did lose my blue rams, golden rams and a couple of neons before the problem was sorted. What i noticed was flashing against rocks in the barbs, the rams stopped eating and developed sunken bellys and a loss of control. I treated the entire tank with prazi over the course of a couple of weeks and eventually got on top of the problem but it took several weeks to come right.

hi caper, are the gills red and are they hanging out near the surface? Could be that the ammonia buildup has given them a gill burn/irritation and they may be having trouble taking up oxygen. If its the case the water change should help, keep us posted as to whether that helps or if the problem continues.