Sea Gull

Thank you, that makes a lot more sense. My (in progress) tank is based on one ecosystem where a few compatible aquarium fish live, so it should be easy for me to start with a couple of easier species and then look into more difficult ones later down the track.

Hi again. Does anyone here know if there is good way to figure out if you are ready to keep a more sensitive species than you've kept before? Some of the 'intermediate difficulty' fish out there look really interesting, but there's not much out there on what intermediate actually looks like.

Some people will put "wanted" ads up on sites like Gumtree, so it's worth checking there to see if anyone in your area is already looking for fish.

Yes. It was added later but probably didn't help water quality or disease resistance. After talking to the people who gave me advice on setting up my first tank; it's pretty clear they consider the mysterious loss of an entire tank to be a normal thing that isn't worth looking into. Which explains a lot. Everything is either cleaned up or thrown away now. This has been a very difficult 'learning experience '. Now just need to not repeat any mistakes.

So it turns out one of my old decorations (removed it from my tank a while ago to see if it was causing the mystery illness) has tiny holes in it and was actually hollow. It was sitting upright but has still somehow not drained completely. So that's an exciting new source of contaminated water. One option is to cut off the bottom centimeter so it drains freely, clean it out in the same way as the tanks and fill it with something so it's solid. Or just throw it away and figure out an alternative.

Second tank is showing signs of infection.

What a week. A 20m tree is currently lying across our/ neighbor's fence, which will be interesting to deal with. At least everyone is safe. Re; the actual fish tank: It turns out that it is cheaper to buy bulk ethanol than bulk cleaning vinegar for some reason. We've been wiping down large / delicate materials and soaking all the smaller parts. (Do not stick your head in the tank while wiping it down. My suggestion would be to use a sponge on a stick.) It's still outside after drying off, and luckily was not hit by any parts of the tree. So now we're just getting replacement filter medium and putting all back together.

Okay, have made a bit more of a plan. Also, sorry for grabbing some advice and then vanishing. My dad had a heart scare, and everything is okay now but it threw some things into chaos. My first plan was to cycle cleaning vinegar through the tank, which should work great. But it is not easy to get 60l of very strong cleaning vinegar without owning a cleaning business. So my new plan is to use vinegar for my quarantine tank, and to disinfect the substrate before throwing it out. Larger surfaces in my tank can be wiped down with ethanol. Luckily, most rubbish tips already deal with animal waste, so they already have ways to deal with diseases. Still planning to disinfect it first though. My cories and tetras will be moving into the bigger tank once it's completely disinfected. The lighting is great for plants, which the tetras really like.

Oh, that sounds lovely! Honestly, my favorite part about online references is being able to search for things in a page. My skim reading is guaranteed to miss the useful parts every time...

Thank you livingart, that's perfect. M. marinum didn't seem to be mentioned in the study, so might need to poke around a bit to figure out what concentrations needed to kill it, but some of the stronger cleaning vinegars should work for any strain. Thank you as well Caryl, that's a great idea. They should be able to take it, but hopefully even if they can't they'll be able to give me some advice.

Oh, in the more southern part of Western Australia. Everyone knows everyone here, so try to be a bit vague for privacy. It basically just means we get new fish species about 10 years after they become popular everywhere else, once the serious fish breeders manage to import them and start a captive breeding population. And that there is bad internet connection...

Have been keeping fish for just a few years, and this has been a bit overwhelming for my first disease outbreak. Still don't know what caused it, no new fish had been introduced and there was no nitrogen buildup. One of my fish must've been incubating it for some time. Their were no signs of illness or lethargy, no ulcers, so we were checking for heater malfunctions, pH fluctuations, pretty much everything else. It was only when one of the larger fish got a crooked spine we worked it out, diagnosis was confirmed by professional biopsy. There's only really cleanup left to do now. Have a fish-less display and hospital tank full of Mycobacterium water. Does anyone know best way to sterilize the tank, and safely dispose of substrate and plants? It's going to be important not to release it into the environment, there is a nearby frog breeding area and would like to protect it from introduced infections.

Hi Caryl, thank you Odessa barbs are so cute, would love some if had a longer tank. It's really nice you still get to visit your pond fish as well, and you know they have a good home.

Hello from Australia! Looking forward to meeting some people who do not give me funny looks for knowing the pH of my tap water! My disabilities can make it hard to write "normal" sentences, or skip smaller words. Please excuse the grammar mistakes, but if you need anything reworded for clarity feel free to ask, it's no problem at all. It's been a hard few months fish-wise, have lost an entire tank after a disease outbreak. But my pygmy cories in the other tank have all decided to spawn, and it seems like a good time to try start talking about the more fun parts of fish keeping again!