MTS found to be incurable - 40 breeder coming up!

[Rokuzachi]

Here's how I spent my weekend (and way too much money).

PFS, fish, snails driftwood (more on that in a moment), 'pagoda rocks', ferts, plants, and raising the water bill!

So, the mopani wood. I've had extremely good luck with this stuff, and I always buy it from the same LFS. I boil it for about 3 hours, soak it overnight in a 5g bucket, and put it in the next day. I have yet to get any discoloration in any of the tanks it's gone into, which amuses me greatly because ten years ago I had a tank with a rather small piece of driftwood in it that discolored the thing from the moment it entered the water, to the day I broke the tank down, despite boiling it on and off for weeks and soaking it for weeks on end.

I fell in love with Marbled Headstanders but through research found them to be incompatible with my plans. So the next best thing... Spotted Headstanders! I got one of them for free (who is not in the pic), because he was sick, and we didn't want to make him the last of his kind in his tank. So he's in QT right now being treated for a bacterial infection.

You can see the three healthy ones below being their usual shy selves.

In the coming weeks I think I'm going to add a pair of Banjo Catfish or Porthole cats and with that and the Oranda, call it good. Except for more snails. I'm going to put like 20 of them in there!

Plant arrangement is temporary, probably going to pull out all the delicate and be left with a bunch of ferns and swords.

 

[CleverBs]

you need more plants man fill that baby out.

 

[Rokuzachi]

Yea it's pretty barren... I'm going to bring over another 3-4 stems of hottoniflora, maybe another few of rotundifola today until I can find the plants I'm looking for. My LFS' are awesome for fish... but I can never seem to find the right plants.

 

[CleverBs]

yeah I ordered mine online, Theres just not enough around here either.

 

[Rokuzachi]

Not exactly a good day...

I worked an extended shift and came home late to one of the Headstanders on the verge of death, and badly burned from the heater. I went to check on the sick one that I adopted, and saw that his popeye which had appeared to be getting better in the one eye that was affected, had worsened and spread to both. I changed out 75% of his QT water and added a 1/2 dose of Pima/Melafix to it.

In the end I think I'll end up with 2 of the 4 left, assuming the others don't try to squeeze behind the heater too. It's a shame because after 24 hours, they were finally eating, nosing around being less shy.

 

[steez]

Sorry to hear that

 

[Austin.b]

Nice, I just bought a 40 gallon breeder lastnight from petco to help my MTS I went from 1 tank about 2 1/2 months ago to now having 4 tanks 10,29,40,75. Im putting a pair of Firemouths and a Pleco in my 40gal

Sorry but what is MTS? And I also got a 40 G breeder from petco!

 

[Jacca]

MTS means multiple tank syndrome

 

[CleverBs]

Not exactly a good day...

I worked an extended shift and came home late to one of the Headstanders on the verge of death, and badly burned from the heater. I went to check on the sick one that I adopted, and saw that his popeye which had appeared to be getting better in the one eye that was affected, had worsened and spread to both. I changed out 75% of his QT water and added a 1/2 dose of Pima/Melafix to it.

In the end I think I'll end up with 2 of the 4 left, assuming the others don't try to squeeze behind the heater too. It's a shame because after 24 hours, they were finally eating, nosing around being less shy.

thats no good, I had a lot of trouble with my 75 gallon at first then once I got it stable everyone has been very happy however I did get high quality fish instead of fish from petsmart.

 

[Rokuzachi]

thats no good, I had a lot of trouble with my 75 gallon at first then once I got it stable everyone has been very happy however I did get high quality fish instead of fish from petsmart.

Unfortunately these were from my favorite LFS. I expected that the sick one probably wouldn't make it, but it's been years since a fish roasted itself on my heater. (The last time it happened it was a large cichlid that was able to recover from it quite well, instead of a sensitive shy little fish)

As far as stability goes, I'd say the tank is marginally less stable than my 56, but definitely more so than my 10 due to the volume of water. In the end I was able to cram all the loaded bio-media from a 20g filter, a 10g filter and half a tray worth from my Fluval 405. When I stopped feeding the tank ammonia to see how fast it could consume it, it was reducing ~1.0ppm to 0 in less than 24 hours prior to adding the sparse plants.

I think ultimately my failure with these fish will be due to lack of research regarding their nature. In hindsight, I can see how one might try to hide behind the heater due to lack of plant cover in the tank. I knew I should have stocked up on plants when I had the chance.

At least the other two are eating and exploring.

 

[CleverBs]

well good, I know what you mean though because I have 5 Pearl gouramies and they like floating plants but sadly I dont have any in my tank but they seem to be very happy regardless.