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Thats interesting, are they dying though?? and is there any thing i can do to help them??

I am currantly restarting our tank due to persistant disease. I brought some plants from waterplanz (trademe) an awesome deal for over 40 stems of plant, all varieties, anyway i planted them as soon as i recieved them and two days later some of the plants are going opaque looking and dissolving away, some are getting small black spots too and going holey. The water temp is 27c and there are no fish in there yet. Any idea what this could be, and what i can do to save my plants?? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your advice Caryl, some of my baby Bristlenoses in my small tank are now showing signs of Hex, i couldnt believe it!! The water conditions have been stable for ages now too and there has been no cross contamination either, or stress that i am aware. So i am going to put all the fish from my big tank in with them and treat the water with metro aswel as the food then i will strip my big tank down and start again. Hopefully it will all go ok, i will let you know.

Hi, Just wondering if you have managed to rid your tank of Hex?? If so, what was your plan?? We are having a hell of a time trying to get rid of this disease. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Can anyone give me some advice about how to strip a tank safely?? I have never had to do this before.

I was thinking about doing that too, i havnt had to do that before, what is involved and what is the best way without stressing the fish too much, thanks.

As some of you know i have been battling hex in our tank for a while now. I have tried everything to get rid of it and apart from our two bristlenoses, all the other fish died from it despite treatment. Today i euthanised our lovely banded gourami male(our only big fish in the tank) as he has been showing signs of hex off and on since we got him. But for the last 2 weeks he has had sores all over him (poss hthd) and internal hex also, he has been on medicated food for 2weeks and in the last 3 days stopped eating altogether and hiding in the tank, so to avoid the bristlenoses being reinfected and to end his suffering i had him put to sleep, but i am feeling REALLY bad about it as he was such a cool fish. Since i brought him and two others 5 months ago we have had nothing but problems with hex, so i am giong to do a large water change today and keep treating the bristlenoses and do daily waterchanges to try and get rid of this aweful disease once and for all!! Sorry just had to get my guilts off my chest!! (but still feeling bad!)

Yip, she is certainly alot better now!!

Well today my female bristlenose passed the biggest poo!! lol. Her tummy is still slightly swollen but she looks alot more comfortable and is moving around alot more. I will have to make sure she has lots of peas in her diet!! Thanks for all the advice.

Thanks for that i have added them to my watchlist!!

Oh my goodness i hope she doesnt do that!!

They have got wood in there.

Ok, this happened last time after i gave them some zucchini, they absolutly gorge themselves and the male will stay on it all day then a few days later he will be lying on his back( but no swollen tummy) then he comes right!! The first time he did this i thought he had died and it was after zucchini so i dont give it to them often but when i do they pig out, should i not give it maybe?? There normal diet is mainly algae wafers and occasionally blood worms. I will give them some peas now.

Our female bristlenose has a seriously distended abdomen. She is breathing fine, and eating but has been quiet for the last 2 days also. The male in the tank is not interested in her at all and still chases her. Could she still be full of eggs?? She did this about about ten days ago aswel and one morning her distended tummy was gone and she was back to her active self.

I know, i have been giving them medicated food and they seem ok, alot of them had stopped showing signs of it before i started treatment but i think i will continue with it and do my daily ware changes aswel. sorry one last question, in a group of bristlenoses, is it common to have some that are tiny and some that are large? out of a group of 18 there are three that look like they havnt grown at all but the others are about three times the size. they were all the same size when i brought them. or could it be that they are just infected with hex? they are eating etc and are really active i would of thought if it was hex that they would of died by now.

That is a great help thanks, Its hard to know with 19 babies who is eating it though and getting any meds if any as they all come to eat at different times.

So are tablets better?? I have got some liquid at the moment and have treated our main tank by making up some food and adding the liquid then freezing it and feeding it directly to the fish but the food dissolves so fast i wonder how much metro they are actually getting. maybe if i added the algae wafers to the liquid and let it absorb it might work too like you said. thanks, hex seems to be the bain of my life at the moment , lol !!!! and the fishes. The water perimetres have all been really good in both tanks so im not sure why i am so unlucky to keep getting it i know it can be sress related i hate to think my fishes are stressed.

Have you got any good recipes for adding metro to? and do you use the liquid or tablets.

When we had the insect man come and spray for flies he covered our tanks with big sheets of plastic(like large black rubbish bags) and we turned the filters off. Everything survived.

We had trouble with high nitrite at the beginning, that may have been the cause as the tank took ages to cycle. The temp is 27c, aqua clear power filter, drift wood, they have a peice of zucchini every day as well as some algae wafers i normally alternate between them, the zucchini is prefered though. they all seem well though but a few of them are trailing whitish stuff.

I have been raising baby bristlenoses for the last month. They are doing really well and the majority are growing well(except for a couple of runts) They are about 2 - 3 cms at the moment and the two goldens are about 5cms. When i was doing a water change yesterday one had died and as carefully looking around at the others i noticed they had stringy poo.(Hex??) I can get Metro from the vets but are these guys too small?? And is liquid or tablets better to use?? Food or in water?? They are in 25 litres, PH 7.0, ammonia nil, nitrites nil. I have treated our main tank for hex recently with success, there was no cross contamination, the liquid added to the water really stressed them and some neons died so i made up medicated food. which works ok.

The ph has been stable at 7.0, the nitrite was up slightly, ammonia nil. I have been feeding them medicated food for hex at the moment and its hard to get them to eat it all so probably why nitrite up but its not dangerous. Once furan finishes its course tommorrow them i will be doing a water change. Strange!!

Our rainbow tetra stopped eating a few days ago and on wednsday went a dark colour around his head and eyes, then his eyes were really swollen like google eyes, if i looked really closly you could see small bits of skin hanging off his eyes and mouth he had white patches on his mouth. and his eyes were also cloudy. He would occasinally go nuts too and spin in circles and swin so fast around the tank you could hardly see him. About a week earlier he was breaking out in sore as was the male dwarf gourami he is in with.( i posted under freshwater" Do Gouramis attack other fish", as i thought that this was what was happening, but its not, he chases him but i havnt seen him nip yet) The gourami is also breaking out in sores but is otherwise ok. I treated the tank yesterday with Furan 2?? and today his eyes are not swollen and he seems a bit more settled. Sorry for the novel, but any ideas??

Poor fish that sounded nasty!! I like the gouramis too, he is a bossy fish with a real character. He has been chasing the other fish too but doesnt really nip them as they are too quick for him, there isnt many fish in the tank at the moment so i need to restock i think then he wont just pick on the rainbow.