tHEcONCH

Yarp ...and yarp!

If you have two tanks (or access to a second), put all the survivors in one and do a complete strip-down of your other tank, disinfect it with salt water, then rinse everything out thoroughly. Put the disinfected and rinsed gravel back in, but leave eveything else out. Change your filter pads for new ones and restart you bacteria colony with cycle / filterstart or the like - double dose it. When the tank is cycled (or if you are prepared to do 95% water changes each day), transfer the healthy looking fish back in (catch them in a net so as to leave as much of the old water in the 'problem' tank as you can). Leave the sick ones in the other tank until they are either well again or dead. Good luck.

You just have to go back to basics - put some cycle or filterstart in your filter, do more regular water changes, and make sure that whatever you collect your rainwater in hasn't been contaminated with something.

Day-light savings time?

It is technically illegal, but I haven't seen too many Sand Police lately.

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. It has the 2 pin German plug, Ja?

That box was for me - you do have my pump in your 600!

I think they are a little more than that normally - but if you can get them for that price, let me know where!

Did your Skimmer arrive without a pump? If so, you have my original (unused) pump which doesn't have the anti-vibration bits - otherwise they have a couple of light grey rubber veins on the case of the pump, which stop it chattering against the skimmer case. You could probably just bung a small piece of rubber in there and get the same effect. Kind of, except it contains a carbon source to make the bacteria populate faster. It works quite well.

I'd better go and list it in the buy/sell, but $750ish (has the new anti-vibration pump etc)

Cobba-nogga Digga Mate!

I'll sell you my unused Deltec MCE600 for what I paid for it (cheap) when you do.

I'd recommend that whatever else you do, splash out on a bottle of JBL 'Filterstart' - I've had really good results with it - it seems to get the tank over the Nitrite spike really quickly

4 Angels will be fine in a tank that size, so long as you don't go adding other relatively 'passive' large cichlids afterwards (e.g. Discus). Rams etc. will be fine, as will larger tetras, but adult Angels will eat small neons etc.

That is fairly normal Discus behaviour. If you think it is getting really out of hand you can make them 're-negotiate' the territory - take them all out of the tank, re-arrange all the plants and logs, do a water change, then reintroduce him LAST, at least 20 minutes after the others go back in. You might just end up with a different one dominating the others, though.

Plastic Ones?

Toxins will weaken all the fish, but only the ones that are stressed will show symptoms - the others just feel bad. Showing weakness is a great way of getting attacked and eaten in the wild. The Metro will be 'giving him the shits' - it is very hard on digestive tract bacteria and it'll be pooing that out (same thing happens to people who take it for too long). Personally I think that the Metro won't be of any real use and would stop treatment, but continue with the Furan.

I went and read Untergasser's enormous Discus Health book last night - he puts fin rot down to environmental stress associated with either mineral deficiencies, or toxins - its not dissimilar to people's hair falling out when they are stressed. If you are using RO water he recommends tipping a bottle or two of natural (presumably not fizzy) mineral water in to the tank to restore trace elements. Given that you are probably not using RO water that seems unnecessary. That leaves a toxin - do you use cleaning products on or near the tank? Things like 'Spray and Wipe', flyspray, and tobacco smoke can all seriously harm fish, even in small quantities. The only other factor is stress - make sure the tank isn't in the sun (and thereby fluctuating in temperature), isn't in a high traffic area, and the tank mates are compatable. If its any consellation, it doesn't look like plague (although I've only seen pictures of it). Good luck.

That's pretty alarming - the only time I've seem anything like that is on fish that have been in transport for a long time / and or in bad (cold) water - none of which seem to apply to your tank. It is definitely an environmental problem, though, so check all parametersCheck the temperature is about 28 degrees, and the other thing worth checking would be copper content (take a sample to John if you don't want to buy your own kit), but that is unlikely except in older houses. Other than that, I think you are going to have to treat with Furan2 - follow the instructions on the pack.

As far as the canisters go, if they are external they shouldn't be a problem - all your fish would be darting if there were a serious stray electrical current issue. Its more likely that you need to use sort of Vitamin supplement, especially given that one of your fish appears to have a condition associated with a lack of them - try adding something like Reef Plus to the shrimp, or better still Reef Solutions.

Perhaps do a good water change and make sure there is plenty of water turnover at the surface - they need well oxygenated water. Good luck.

Just be aware that you will never remove al the snails by hand. If you really want to get rid of them, you'll need loaches.

Feed it some high quality food + vitamins.

Hmmm... hard to diagnose anything definite, but generally finrot only occurs in tanks that have poor water parameters. It may be that even if you are doing regular water changes that your filter is too small and unable to process enough waste fast enough - what kind of filter are you using? It may also be that they are bored with the food and a lot of it ends up rotting in the bottom of the tank. Try something like JBL Grana Cichlid for a change and see how they feed. It may also be that the new Discus just isn't a good one. There are a lot of low quality locally (NZ) bred Discus on the market at the moment that are simply genetically weak - and it is often the runtier individuals that get sold off first. Post up a picture if you can.

So the next shipment is due here in a few days, huh? Should I buy any of it?