Dale_I
Aquarium Advice Freak
First, two shouts of hoorah for QT!
Picked up 3 Boesemani and 2 Turquoise Rainbow three weeks ago to round out the schools in the main tank. Got them in the 20L QT and one died very quickly. I waited a week to make sure it wasn't something in the batch or in the tank and the other four seemed to be fine.
I took the one that didn't make it back and LFS replaced him. 10 days later I see what I thought was a bottom lip injury on the replacement fish. Over the last couple days I noticed it go away, then come back again, and now it looks like a-typical columnaris. This morning, three of the five Rainbows have evidence of it. I also added two Oto's last week for transfer to the main tank, which already has two.
Water parameters: 0 ammonia, 0 to 0.25 nitrite, and 40 nitrate, but this is my tank maintenance day. So, I wasn't surprised to see slightly high nitrate, but the nitrite did concern me. It wasn't clearly on the first color of the chart, but wasn't 0 either. Tank completed cycling 4 weeks ago and was cycled for one week before I added the fish. Fluval U3 filtration, temp 78.5 F +/- 0.3 F.
I did a 60% PWC, added 1.5 teaspoon of salt per 5 gallon, and dosed with Pimafix. The Pimafix instructions say 5 ml per 10 Gal, so I put in 10 ml.
Instructions say to dose 10 ml for 7 consecutive days. However, I'll be pulling water samples every day to keep the water in crystal condition. I don't want to see any nitrites (or even the hint of them) or any nitrates in excess of 20 during the treatment.
Here's the question... Since the Pimafix will be increasing in strength as the days continue, if I have to do a PWC during treatment, would I dose the Pimafix at the concentration of the day? Or, would I dose the Pimafix at the 5 ml per 10 Gal that the instructions call for?
I'm not sure if the Pimafix is reducing strength over time, which is why you re-dose every day. Or, if we are increasing the strength of the Pimafix slowly over the course of a week to prevent water condition shock.
For example: 50% PWC on day 3 I would add 5 ml for the 50% that I left in, then 3 (for the third day) x 5 ml for the replaced water.
Any comments are appreciated, because I fully expect a PWC sometime mid next week.
Picked up 3 Boesemani and 2 Turquoise Rainbow three weeks ago to round out the schools in the main tank. Got them in the 20L QT and one died very quickly. I waited a week to make sure it wasn't something in the batch or in the tank and the other four seemed to be fine.
I took the one that didn't make it back and LFS replaced him. 10 days later I see what I thought was a bottom lip injury on the replacement fish. Over the last couple days I noticed it go away, then come back again, and now it looks like a-typical columnaris. This morning, three of the five Rainbows have evidence of it. I also added two Oto's last week for transfer to the main tank, which already has two.
Water parameters: 0 ammonia, 0 to 0.25 nitrite, and 40 nitrate, but this is my tank maintenance day. So, I wasn't surprised to see slightly high nitrate, but the nitrite did concern me. It wasn't clearly on the first color of the chart, but wasn't 0 either. Tank completed cycling 4 weeks ago and was cycled for one week before I added the fish. Fluval U3 filtration, temp 78.5 F +/- 0.3 F.
I did a 60% PWC, added 1.5 teaspoon of salt per 5 gallon, and dosed with Pimafix. The Pimafix instructions say 5 ml per 10 Gal, so I put in 10 ml.
Instructions say to dose 10 ml for 7 consecutive days. However, I'll be pulling water samples every day to keep the water in crystal condition. I don't want to see any nitrites (or even the hint of them) or any nitrates in excess of 20 during the treatment.
Here's the question... Since the Pimafix will be increasing in strength as the days continue, if I have to do a PWC during treatment, would I dose the Pimafix at the concentration of the day? Or, would I dose the Pimafix at the 5 ml per 10 Gal that the instructions call for?
I'm not sure if the Pimafix is reducing strength over time, which is why you re-dose every day. Or, if we are increasing the strength of the Pimafix slowly over the course of a week to prevent water condition shock.
For example: 50% PWC on day 3 I would add 5 ml for the 50% that I left in, then 3 (for the third day) x 5 ml for the replaced water.
Any comments are appreciated, because I fully expect a PWC sometime mid next week.