Christmasfish
Aquarium Advice Addict
I have gotten a lot of help from the other site I have frequented, but for mystery problems more sources are better....
Three Betta. Day two Betta Azul and Betta UncolFish showed ich like symptoms. Betta Blackbeard is 5cm long (excluding finnage) and though terribly scarred and torn was pugnacious and alert.
Bought broad spectrum medication. Fish A cleared, fish U won't clear completely.
Day 2 Tetra disaster begins (it was ugly and now over..so back to bettas).
Find out about cycling, Eeek! Buy test kits with horrific results. Correct problems.
Day 4, as soon as the fuzz melted away, the blobs showed up. Now keeping tanks warmer with reptile low-watt heater pad underneath all three. The blobs appear. First on Uncol, then on Blackbeard. Cross contamination? Possibly. Azul was clear until today. He has what looks just like a flea hanging on his portside fancy ventral fin
About the blobs. They prefer the protected side of..?paired..pec fins? First there is black speck, then white fuzzy ich-like symptom spots appear all over affected area then it becomes pinkish and blobby chewing gum looking thing and fish can scrape it off. A strong salt bath was very helpful, but I am not sure how long to treat the bettas, they are freshwater fish.
It is obviously VERY itchy. The fish will scratch themselves against feeding sticks or your fingers if they have chance. Plants too, but they have thrashed the watersprites into stems with leaves at the very top. Otherwise they roll in the gravel. I now offer each their own stick and throw it away (these are bamboo skewers that we were originally feeding the fish flake by flake with to avoid contamination of their new tank setups and using as focus to teach tricks) i am afraid if the scratch to vigourous in the gravel (especially mine, I think the finer finned specimens are not so rough because it is too uncomfortable) they may get more infective problems from the scrapes on their sides. I know how much it must itch for a fish to allow itself to be touched! Of course the subject of further contamination by scratching loose these blobs was mentioned. eek! I don't offer a scratch as often now, but they still must be prevented from tearing their skin using gravel.
I do suction the tank daily and clean every third day. And I immediately suction the blobs when the come loose.
If I had been more careful about contamination and quarantine procedures I prolly wouldn't be in this boat. I am sure the plants are where all these weird things popped up from. they also came from a mega store and the plant tank has a tetra/guppy shaped fish, a mini frog and several snails wander in it.
The things from the lfs have no health problems. The gourami in fact made more gourami the 3 day in the larger tank. ^.^
Stats:
Bettas are in 4 qt aquascene aquariums with bio-filter/areator set ups.
The temp ranges at 74 at night and 76 in the day in all 3 tanks
PH is 7.0 going in.
In tank 2 it always drops to 6.8 (the original sick fish btw). the others rise stay at 7.5 with no steady rise.
Ammonia is less than 0 in all 3 after I got wise to it.
Nitrites are near 0 in all but tank 2.
Tank 2 gets a steady rise . I change water at 0.3 so i don't know how fast a rise would continue.
All tanks have had salts since day one. Preventive measure as I learned it... 5 large grains per qt. Sea salt til I ran out and Aquarium salt since day 3.
Medication is the Super Fungus plus. Main ingredients are Sulfamethazaine, Sulfadiazine and MalachiteGreen. Because of the calculations for the mini-tanks being smaller than dosage chart..am I undermedicating?
Calls for a tsp. (5ml) per 5 gallons of liquid. I am using 1 ml.
It looks all the world like lice or ticks. They are a minimum least 7mm around to be seen so well. Larger than seed beads. When floating loose and held up to light it kinda looks like a hyperplump sea monkey. If it is something biting them it could open up all kinds of horrible fungus and bacteria attack. My fish had part of a fin ragged out by gravel scratching or yuk I can't tell. Just because my fish is big and ugly compared to the other two doesn't mean I want a new fish already!
Three Betta. Day two Betta Azul and Betta UncolFish showed ich like symptoms. Betta Blackbeard is 5cm long (excluding finnage) and though terribly scarred and torn was pugnacious and alert.
Bought broad spectrum medication. Fish A cleared, fish U won't clear completely.
Day 2 Tetra disaster begins (it was ugly and now over..so back to bettas).
Find out about cycling, Eeek! Buy test kits with horrific results. Correct problems.
Day 4, as soon as the fuzz melted away, the blobs showed up. Now keeping tanks warmer with reptile low-watt heater pad underneath all three. The blobs appear. First on Uncol, then on Blackbeard. Cross contamination? Possibly. Azul was clear until today. He has what looks just like a flea hanging on his portside fancy ventral fin
About the blobs. They prefer the protected side of..?paired..pec fins? First there is black speck, then white fuzzy ich-like symptom spots appear all over affected area then it becomes pinkish and blobby chewing gum looking thing and fish can scrape it off. A strong salt bath was very helpful, but I am not sure how long to treat the bettas, they are freshwater fish.
It is obviously VERY itchy. The fish will scratch themselves against feeding sticks or your fingers if they have chance. Plants too, but they have thrashed the watersprites into stems with leaves at the very top. Otherwise they roll in the gravel. I now offer each their own stick and throw it away (these are bamboo skewers that we were originally feeding the fish flake by flake with to avoid contamination of their new tank setups and using as focus to teach tricks) i am afraid if the scratch to vigourous in the gravel (especially mine, I think the finer finned specimens are not so rough because it is too uncomfortable) they may get more infective problems from the scrapes on their sides. I know how much it must itch for a fish to allow itself to be touched! Of course the subject of further contamination by scratching loose these blobs was mentioned. eek! I don't offer a scratch as often now, but they still must be prevented from tearing their skin using gravel.
I do suction the tank daily and clean every third day. And I immediately suction the blobs when the come loose.
If I had been more careful about contamination and quarantine procedures I prolly wouldn't be in this boat. I am sure the plants are where all these weird things popped up from. they also came from a mega store and the plant tank has a tetra/guppy shaped fish, a mini frog and several snails wander in it.
The things from the lfs have no health problems. The gourami in fact made more gourami the 3 day in the larger tank. ^.^
Stats:
Bettas are in 4 qt aquascene aquariums with bio-filter/areator set ups.
The temp ranges at 74 at night and 76 in the day in all 3 tanks
PH is 7.0 going in.
In tank 2 it always drops to 6.8 (the original sick fish btw). the others rise stay at 7.5 with no steady rise.
Ammonia is less than 0 in all 3 after I got wise to it.
Nitrites are near 0 in all but tank 2.
Tank 2 gets a steady rise . I change water at 0.3 so i don't know how fast a rise would continue.
All tanks have had salts since day one. Preventive measure as I learned it... 5 large grains per qt. Sea salt til I ran out and Aquarium salt since day 3.
Medication is the Super Fungus plus. Main ingredients are Sulfamethazaine, Sulfadiazine and MalachiteGreen. Because of the calculations for the mini-tanks being smaller than dosage chart..am I undermedicating?
Calls for a tsp. (5ml) per 5 gallons of liquid. I am using 1 ml.
It looks all the world like lice or ticks. They are a minimum least 7mm around to be seen so well. Larger than seed beads. When floating loose and held up to light it kinda looks like a hyperplump sea monkey. If it is something biting them it could open up all kinds of horrible fungus and bacteria attack. My fish had part of a fin ragged out by gravel scratching or yuk I can't tell. Just because my fish is big and ugly compared to the other two doesn't mean I want a new fish already!
