GrahamC

That's the usual perception but it's not that straight forward. Bacteria etc are not only in your filter, but everywhere in your tank, sand, gravel, plant roots etc, and they can be enough to keep the ammonia levels down. There are some people who run their tanks with no filters at all except plants/substrate and some water current as in nature. As to whether your bugs will die off overnight, they are actually pretty resilient living inside their biofilms. In an anaerobic environment some will switch to denitrifying activity instead, and others will adopt different metabolic pathways. And others will go into an inactive state. There's a news item here about this http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4780 though not specifically talking about turning off a cannister. Some people have reported that their cannisters were fine after 72 hour power blackouts with no ammonia spikes. Anyway, if anyone had a noisy filter and wanted to see what happens, just try it during the day and monitor the ammonia levels to see what happens.

Can't you just set up a timer to switch off the filter at night if it's too noisy?

My recollection is somewhat faint, and probably impaired, but I was told by a prescriber that it used to cost the DHB nothing to get IVIG from the blood service, but then after processing moved to Oz, the DHB had to pay $10 - 30k for a course.

Actually I believe some components of blood are sold to Australia, and then we pay a huge price to buy it back as intravenous gamma globulin.

Turn it around so that the back is now the front?

Sorry to hear. He must have developed a secondary bacterial infection with septicaemia so nothing you could have done short of taking to the vet for strong antibiotics would have helped.

if it only just popped up recently ( as opposed to being just noticed recently ), then it is likely to be an infection and not a tumour. Looks near where one might find a nares pore infection ...

Bioload refers to the amount of organic ( living or dead ) material in your tank that is contributing to the amount of ammonia. So, one pond snail constitutes a much smaller bioload than one goldfish. Total dissolved solids refers to the minerals and organic compounds found in the water that produce a certain specific gravity, and pH ( by virtue of the calcium salts ). So, fish that are found in a high pH environment come from "hard" waters full of calcium, and those that come from "soft" waters have low calcium, low pH, and low dissolved solids. Osmotic pressure relates to the amount of total dissolved solids. When people talk of fish undergoing pH shock, in fact it may be osmotic shock ie. having to deal with water of much different osmotic pressure that they are used to. Does carbon keep the water clean? Yes in so much it will clear organic compounds that contribute to that yellowish look of aged water. But these humic substances that give it that colour keep micronutrients in solution for the use by plants, and also bind to toxic heavy metals.

If the filter material you took from the other tank was just sitting inside the tank as opposed to having oxygenated water forced through it, then you may have fewer nitrifying microbes than you might expect. But it depends on the bioload whether or not you'll see an ammonia spike. You are going to have to keep testing. A lot of people don't use activated carbon filters because they're only used to remove medicines, and other chemicals as well as dissolved organics. And dissolved organics can be helpful in binding to heavy metals. If you rinse any live filter (including carbon filters that have become biological filters ) in chlorinated water, you will suffer microbial loss. How much depends on how thoroughly you rinse them since the chlorine is put there by municipal water authorities to kill microbes. Keep the gravel in the sock as long as it takes for your filter to cycle. Some of the microbes will seed to various other surfaces in your tank. For most fish we keep, they seem to tolerate a wide range of pH as long as it remains stable. It may not be pH so much as total dissolved solids that is important. PS: I use the term microbes since the evidence is that the bugs that process ammonia etc are not bacteria but archaea in a freshwater tank.

Definitely looks like fungus which is an opportunistic infection that invades the tissues when the slime layer is breached and the skin damaged in a sick fish. It's not contagious if it's SAPROLEGNIA as those spores are everywhere already. The herbal medications you're using might help it developing in the others, but won't really treat this boy. And you want to avoid a secondary bacterial infection. My suggestion is to divide into 2 what ever filter material you have in your 75L tank filter ( unless Karina is offering live filter wool? ), and put that into your 100L filter. Use that in your spare tank with this sick oscar with water from the original tank. And treat with malachite green or similar, and keep up the daily PWCs in both tanks. Hopefully others with experience will chime in.

Sorry to hear.

Sounds good. If the nitra zorb removes all the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, then I would guess your biological filter will not get started. So, you'll still need some cycled filter material from someone.

You can hand mince meat using a cleaver ... doesn't take too long. Wife does it by hand rather than using the mincer.

I did wonder about the wisdom of washing the gravel when you moved the tank in that other thread even though it looked filthy as it might have been better to leave the fish as you got them, and gradually have improved their conditions. It might be that this fish got some trauma in the move which is now infected, as well as being stressed by a new cycle. My own experience of massive environmental change ie. a clean has not been good I see some clubs maintain a database of users who can provide cycled media for emergency use ... perhaps the admins here might consider setting up such a service?

The rapid breathing might be nitrite poisoning causing Methaemoglobinemia. This form of haemoglobin can not transport oxygen. Emergency treatment is with chloride ions ie. by adding a small amount of tonic salt. And then remove the salt with water changes.

Malathion ?

Hard to know what to suggest without an understanding of the situation. I've only contributed to things like village water wells. In days gone by I would have suggested books. But these days a second hand ebook reader can be loaded with 100s of books and weighs nothing. Cost and a way to keep it charged might be an issue though.

No, not morning. UVB is strongest at mid day when the sun's rays take the shortest path through the atmosphere. Which is why it is advised that you don't go out in the mid day sun in case you burn. But that is the time for maximum synthesis of D3. So, I think it is recommended you get your exposure at 10 am or thereabouts to get a balance of not being quickly burnt, and getting enough D3. The time you spend outside without protection depends on your skin colour. And for about 4 months of the year you can spend the whole day outside naked and still not make any D3 due to the sun's rays path through the sky being much lower and therefore longer resulting in loss of energetic photons. Diet will not have any influence of the synthesis of D3 which is a photolytic phenomenon, and there's no shortage of 7-dehydrocholesterol. And to make this relevant to this forum, I believe fish get their D3 from eating krill or from those that eat krill.

It's a disease of industrial countries and not 3rd world countries. And cultural issues are also important. Wearing a burqa is incompatible with D3 sufficiency so deficiency is common in places such as Saudi Arabia too. As for why PIs and Maori are more susceptible to D3 deficiency, darker skin is one reason, but more likely the kids are just not going outside to play anymore. Rickits is a metabolic bone disease. Severe D3 deficiency can cause heart failure from muscle disease but I suspect those kids were victims of rheumatic fever which is definitely a 3rd world disease!

Since 95% or more of vitamin D is derived from sunshine, you were misinformed. But ignorance of vitamin D metabolism was quite common then amongst medical professionals. That state has changed for the better in the last few years.

You could try smothering it with duckweed and then harvest the duckweed for the fish.

Cases of rickets are being reported in Australia and NZ. One would think there is enough sunshine but child rearing practices have changed. One used to put babies out in the sun in their basinets but the dermatologists have put paid to that. It is recommended that breast fed children have vitamin D supplementation because mothers are usually deficient and so their breast milk lacks sufficient vitamin D. A study by a colleague in Wellington showed severe deficiency in 60% of young mothers http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/119-1241/2144/ in a practice that had reported 10 cases of rickets over the previous 3 years. I published a paper the year before showing deficiency in a clinic population in central NZ. I would assume that this infant is being breast fed. Infant formulae contain vitamin D, calcium etc.

Rickets is treated with sunshine. The maximum the chemist can sell you is 1000IU per capsule ( health supplement ). The adult tablets are 50,000IU per tablet and are only available on prescription. Cheapest oral option is to take some cod liver oil with you which is 400IU per teaspoon. But really, sunshine is the treatment. If the infant has rickets, the mother most likely needs treating as well. For an adult, 20 mins of whole body sun exposure will generate 20,000IU of D3 in that part of the world. Longer exposure will not generate any more.

Actually it's quite simple to do. You just put some skin out from different reptiles and expose to UVB, and measure the result of how much 7-dehydrocholesterol gets converted to previtamin D3. From memory, this was done for humans by using foreskin obtained from circumcisions, and comparing D3 synthesis at different latitudes. But as you say, if the nocturnal reptiles get a bit of UVB, they don't need supplementation.

In a natural planted tank you can use topsoil from the back garden, and cover it with some fine gravel. No CO2 injection required. The substrate gets replenished with fish food, and products of fish digestion.