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Post by fishfever on Oct 3, 2009 15:27:38 GMT -5
Thanks Carl. Trying to do things late at night after a long day leads to dumb mistakes. Because I use a small bath container (usually 1 pint of water is all I use) small errors with meds can be really bad. I have never swabbed with PP before and did not take into account all the PP that is in the swabs (2 of them since I had 2 tetras with the mouth fungus). There is only a few drops of PP normally in the bath solution and with this small a bath the amount of PP in the swabs could have easily tripled the normal concentration. Reducing the bath time greatly (30 mins normally) probably would have saved them had I realized this but it was the end of a long day and I wasn't thinking clearly. The other thing that I have been noticing is that both tetras seemed a bit lifeless (not moving much) after PP baths although they seemed to wake right up as soon as they were reintroduced to the tank. This should have told me they were sensitive to PP and I should have been using less PP, less bath time or probably just MB baths. I didn't notice this effect with the MB baths. I've learned a couple of hard lessons here. It's really a shame that my dumb mistake killed them as they were both close to recovering from the mouth fungus after months of meds, baths and blowing out the beneficial bacteria in my main tank! By the way, I have misplaced my API freshwater nitrate color card so was searching online for one and the only place I could find one was your store web site: www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Downloads.htmlVery handy as I have no idea where my card is...
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Post by Carl on Oct 3, 2009 19:46:58 GMT -5
Thanks for the compliment on our Downloads page, I did this to have something kind of unique that costs visitors nothing (but hopefully scores some good will points or earns me a few pennies when someone clicks on an ad ) As to the use of Potassium Permanganate, I should note one point as compared to the use of Methylene Blue, and that is PP is a strong oxidizer that essentially amounts to a reasonably safe way to "bleach" your fish. As well stopping this oxidative reaction after a swabbing or bath by dunking the fish in a 1-2 dip of tank water with up to 5x strength of Prime or most other aquarium water conditioners to stop this reaction may often be a good idea. With MB, this is not a concern and in fact you want the MB to be continued to be absorbed into the fish for opitium effectiveness. Carl
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Post by fishfever on Oct 8, 2009 18:13:22 GMT -5
Thanks Carl, I've learned alot about using PP safely. Platys seem to be able to tolerate it much better than tetras (I used PP pretty exclusively to treat the one that had columnaris for about 30 days, although I never swabbed with PP like I did the other day).
I am finding that although the 26g total ammonia level is always 0, nitrite is varying between 0 and 0.5ppm. I recall when this tank was first cycled we couldn't really get it to 0 all the time. It usually read about 0.125ppm (but sometimes 0 also) so this seems to be the same issue. The other cycled tanks always read nitrite=0 whenever I check them. But a standard dose of Prime can handle up to about 2.2ppm if ammonia is 0 and nitrates are low so I'll just keep using this every other day until it is a solid 0.
I took all the baby mollies in our tank to Petco and Petland for adoption yesterday (females to Petco, males to Petland) leaving us with 2 adults and 2 juveniles (all female). We still have a few smaller ones in the fry tank. My wife purchased 3 Buenos Aires tetras (2 male, 1 female) to replace the two we lost. The female is doing her best to imitate the male we lost with lots of active swimming (although not quite as crazy as the male we lost with all his twisting, flipping and obstacle course runs). One of the males seems to be somewhat infatuated with a female mickey mouse platy about his size which is odd. But they all seem healthy and are doing well and for the most part seem to be mixing with the community (although we did find one platy that has had her tail fin nipped after the first day). We'll have to keep a watch on this but the new fish seem to be settling in.
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Post by fishfever on Nov 29, 2009 18:08:05 GMT -5
Not much new here in this tank but did have a juvenile molly come down with something a few weeks ago.. she started shivering/trembling uncontrollably for a few seconds at a time. I have seen "molly disease" but this looked different or at least the symptoms appeared different. I saw half a tank of mollies at a LFS with this and their heads would swing from side to side like pendulums. In this case the molly head movement was very small but almost like someone was holding a small vibrator to her for a few seconds. I upped the salt and raised the tank temp a bit but she got worse and a few days she was having to work hard to swim and couldn't hold her tail up (most of the time she had the shape of an upside down "L").
At this point I put her in the hospital tank and elevated the salt and temp. I did not expect her to survive but I put Pimafix, Melafix and Paraguard in the tank. I started twice a day MB/salt baths with a little Eyrthromycin in the bath from a pack that was already opened. I fed her medicated antibacterial food but didn't see her eat any so I also added flake food every few days to make sure she ate something. In the mean time, since we have given away almost all our mollies, I went to Petco to see if I could adopt one back since the last time I was there I saw one left (a lady has been adopting most of ours from the store but for some reason she left one). It was still in the adoption tank so I adopted it back with the idea of it replacing the one that was sick if it didn't live. I continued treatments on the sick molly for a week and she started to perk up and look a lot better after a few days of treatment. She hated the MB/salt baths more than any fish I can remember; she would thrash around the bath even before I added the drops of MB to the bath. Even after she improved, I continued treatment for a few days then left her in the hospital tank for about a week for observation. She looked normal so she is now back in the 26g and seems to be doing fine. I have no idea what she had but glad she made it.
I have discovered that my recycled tank is better able to process nitrite than before I trashed the beneficial bacteria. Before I used to measure 0 or 0.125ppm (color was half-way between 0 and 0.25ppm) depending on when I measured it. I always had this problem from the very beginning with this tank even before fish were added. Now, I always measure 0 no matter when I measure it. So the bacteria that does the nitrite->nitrate conversion seems to have a better hold in this tank. I believe this may be because on the recycle I seasoned the tank with substrate (in a stocking) from a cycled tank that always measures 0 for nitrite (as well as a used filter cartridge from that tank).
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