Jennifer

Oh! Secret squirrel me too! Pretty please?? :bounce: Just a teeny tiny piece... I love Java fern and I have never seen any like that. I would absolutely love to grow some of that gorgeous plant.

Yay, apistos! BTW Scarlet badis and Dario dario are slightly different. Dario are under 2.5cm max (my females are much smaller even) and badis are up to 4 to 5 cm max. Dario also lack the badis' dark spots at the base of the caudal fin and under the eye. Males are quite aggressive to each other and can harass the females so it is best if there is one male to several females. They are slow deliberate feeders and only eat live foods (unless you are really good at wiggling a dead bloodworm).

Pointyyyy....butterrr...covereddd....stick.....

Awesome! Let me know when there are a couple ready for new homes.

Great advice Caryl, I am inclined to agree, treatments do pose a significant risk. However, 2fishy if you are interested in finding out the cause of the problem, so that you can treat it, I would advise that you look at the following flowchart. It is a very good place to start in lieu of contacting a veterinarian who treats fish: http://www.fishyfarmacy.com/fish_diseases/eyes.html If you need help understanding the structures of the eye to determine what areas that are affected I am happy to help if needed, of I am sure there are abundant resources online. Whatever you choose, good luck! **edit - typo :oops:

If you dissolve it in a bunch of water and leave it to sit over night you can just carefully pour off the salt water and leave all the silt behind in the bottle (that is, if you don't want all the silt in your tank) altough if it is a very small quantity you probably wont notice much. I make saturated salt solutions (for lab work) and I dissolve a kilo of cheap salt in 1 litre of water, and there is a thick layer of silt at the bottom the next morning! Not harmful though.

All of those types of fish need at least 5 in a group (or more) to be happiest, and that tank can accomodate it.

Drool...when should I send you my order P44? :lol:

I have one of these for my hospital tank. I just keep the sponge in one of my canisters and if I ever need to hospitalise or quarantine fish I have a new sponge in there all cycled and ready to go. Those filters have a LOT of grunt. I found it worked just as well as a medium sized canister filter in terms of flow, but they don't have much room for extra media so you can't stock very high unless you get better media, like Eheim Pro for example. It is possible to cut back the sponge a little so that you can squeeze some other media in there. Anyway, I believe in keeping the flow as high as you can without the fish getting too stressed. If you provide lots of space between plants and logs the fish can hide if needed if they need a break from the flow. You can add more or less bubbles by adjusting the intake tube at the top (or even remove it if you have enough surface agitation from the filter itself. Just my opinion tho...

Not sure if this would work...but could you float a closed container/med bath with him in it (with something in it for him to grip onto) in the cool tank?

Yes but the concentration of CO2 you exhale is about 100 times greater than the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere so the plants should love it...but of course you would have to keep breathing into the box as the plants use it up!

Sorry, poor girl.

Sorry, I know this is an old post, but I came across it when searching about toxicity from tennis balls in an aquarium (don't ask - someone contacted me saying her child put a bunch of tennis balls in their tank and she wondered if they were toxic and she should evacuate her fish...). Anyway...tennis balls should never be used for animals that chew a lot since the abrasive surface causes dental attrition (the wearing down of enamel so fast that the secondary dentine cannot keep up and pulp exposure results which can cause pain, tooth death, root abcesses, flattened crowns, tooth loss and potentially a loss of lots of money for the owner). The surface of the tennis balls is mildly abrasive but over time this can be as bad as chewing on rocks. The problem is even worse when the balls are used on the beach when sand gets trapped in the fibres of the tennis ball and causes significant abrasion to the teeth. Smooth rubber balls are best. HTH

Wasting is one of those conditions that is very difficult to diagnose. If all the other fish are ok, I would start looking at environmental and dietary issues that pertain specifically to fish of his type. He may require a nutrient that you weren't aware of. Once they start wasting away, it is sometimes very difficult to bring them back - poor nutrition affects immunity, development, etc.

Great advice from everyone. 8) TLC Smart Start is another great product that helps to seed the filter with the beneficial bacteria Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter so both ammonia and nitrite can start being converted in the tank almost at once. I have used it with gret results. If you are confused, the difference between cycling with fish and cycling without is as simple as adding fish or adding straight ammonia. Both require waiting 7 days to 3 weeks before adding more fish. Fishless cycling can often be faster since you can raise the temperature and get bacterial populations up quicker - and I personally believe it is more humane. Here are some quick details to get you started if you are interested in goin that route: With the fishless cycling method, no fish are added until the tank is completely cycled. The ammonia levels are created artificially either in the form of adding decaying food, dead fish, dead shrimp or simply by adding a small amount of pure ammonia (without added detergents) from the supermarket. The following steps are carried out: 1. The tank is filled with water and the heater is turned up to 32 degrees. 2. Ammonia is added until the levels are just detectable (up to 4 ppm (mg/L) using a standard aquatic ammonia test kit. 3. The water is tested every day and after a week or so the ammonia levels will begin to drop and the nitrite levels will increase. 4. After a few more days, the nitrite levels will keep rising and eventually it will start to fall and the nitrate levels will begin to increase. 5. Once there is no trace of ammonia or nitrites the temperature can be turned down and a partial water change can be carried out (do not clean the filter or vacuum the gravel). This process will take 7 days to 3 weeks depending on the concentration of ammonia and the temperature as well as whether you have added a product or dirty water from another tank that will seed the filter (it isn't necessary to do that but it can speed up the process a little). A small number of fish can be added as soon as the water is tested to be stable for 24 hours. The number of fish can gradually be built up over time as bacterial populations adjust to the bioload. Best of luck to you. This is the most fun time - setting up a new tank! :bounce:

Look who's back!!

Hmmm, I had a ramshorn outbreak in one of my small tanks. I had this one large snail that arrived on a plant I got and I thought - how bad can one snail be?? It was all by itself for about 6 months then all of a sudden I had about 1000 babies in the tank. They just kept coming and coming and coming - I kept siphoning them off into a net to feed to my loaches in another tank. Even then, the population just never went down. Loaches were happy but I got sick of it - the snails poo a lot and the tank still had algae so I tore the tank apart. Just my experiences though...

Google Dr. Sophia Yin. She's a veterinarian, teaches at the prestigious UC Davis school of vet med, is one of the world's foremost behaviourists and is an expert at training all species of animal. She has lots of videos on You Tube, mostly dogs and cats but there are horses and chickens too, among others. You use the same principles with all animals. Motivation + reinforcement give the best results (over punishment) every time. But you will see what I mean. Couldn't recommend her more, for any animal owner.

+1 peat moss I have always used peat, I think it lasts heaps longer and keeps any odours away. Cheap too - a mini bale at Bunnings costs about $11 and it would probably fill a couple dozen shoe boxes.

+1 You will see a big difference when they are in larger groups, although it can take a few days for them to settle in.

Welcome to the forums spaceman. It might be good for you to introduce yourself in the Welcome forum and also to add your location to your profile (top right, under user profile) so that people in your area can provide advice specific to your area. I am sure there will be some good advice for you here about these fish. :bounce:

I don't know how long the plants have been established, but if they are relatively new to the tank they will not be growing rapidly yet so there will be excess nutrients in the water which fuel nuisance algae growth. In the mean time I would slightly decrease the photoperiod and increase the airation (both can be helpful against brown algae). Don't muck around with the plants so they have a chance to settle in. I would begin adding flurish excel to help the plants get established and drive off some algae growth (the airation will make the DIY CO2 hardly effective but keep it up if you already have it set up). In a couple of weeks you should see a vast decrease in algae growth and hopefully the plants will begin to start growing better. At this stage you can increase the photo period gradully up to 12 hours. Keep up the DIY CO2 and Flourish excel and begin to add fertiliser so the plants can outcompete the algae. All of that may not work for you, but it always works for me. Good luck.

Is this a shop crawl or a tank crawl?

Oh, and the UV filter is helpful for removing microorganisms and floating algae but the intensity of the light is a critical factor for success. Many report that it keeps the water clear. I personally don't like to kill of bacteria unless I really have to but a UV filter can be helpful against some parasites.

You can't beat Eheims but they are pricey. If funds are a concern the Fluval 05 series are also very good, I run several of them (can't afford eheims for all my tanks) and they work great. You would be fine adding a Fluval 405 to the setup you already have. Adding some Eheim Pro substrate to the canisters is also a good idea. Plants are beneficial not only will they provide shelter to reduce stress on the fish, but they will also help remove nitrates. If you don't have plants to soak up nutrients, simpler plant life (algae) can begin to thrive. On the other hand, the frequent water changes required with discus will affect the way you deliver nutrients/fertalisers to the plants...always the balance. There are plenty of low maintenance plants that would be suitable.