Shai

Hi everyone, It's been ages since I last visited. I've been a fishmom all this time but life took me down roads that left me with little time to post on the forum. Now I'm coming back! I wish it was under better circumstances though, but primarily I'm back to downsize and sell or give all but one of my finkids away to someone who can take better care of them than I can right now. The one I'll be keeping I need to downsize into a nice little home suited just for her. After that's all done I hope to be able to keep tabs on the community a bit more like I used to, and one day down the road get back into more serious fishkeeping. Shai

Ha! Wouldn't that be something! I am still having trouble with this betta. A varied diet of frozen foods still causes him to blow up like a balloon, even when the amount offered is less than half the size of one eye. I do wonder if there is an internal blockage. When I brought him home, the tank I introduced him to had several very small ramshorn snails in it. He did take interest in them but I didn't think much of it. I've had bettas before who were rather offended by snails and would flare at them to teach them a lesson so I figured this interest would be no different. He'd probably never seen one before. But now I start to wonder if this betta ate one whole, shell and all. Their size was small enough to get one in his mouth if he was determined enough. I honestly can't really see that happening, but other than this eating issue the betta shows no other signs of illness at all. His color is great, his fins are healthy, and when he isn't fighting the bloat he goes about his business as usual. He's not reclusive or inactive. So supposing he does somehow have a shell in his stomach, he's either going to starve to death because I won't be able to feed him enough to sustain him, or the shell will hopefully eventually break down enough that he can pass it without it doing severe damage to his insides. I haven't tried any sort of medication or epsom salts or anything yet--just increased water changes. I'm not convinced I should medicate him, and not having any experience before using epsom salts, I'm not sure what help they might be in this situation. Thoughts?

In the last few days Osiris has been doing better. The latest blockage finally cleared and I've fed a few bits of frozen foods a few times. He still shows signs of difficulty but I haven't medicated, just continued to do frequent water changes. I'm taking it slow with him...don't want to do too much to the poor guy all at once.

Interesting read indeed. Seems to me my betta is one of the ones mentioned which is prone to bloating and constipation. I've had bettas before which ended up constipated for one reason or another--managed to eat a whole snail, for example--but never this bad. I tried feeding him one pellet only day before yesterday and today he looks the worst he's been: still has a marble in his gut and is laying on his side at the surface. I'm not new to keeping bettas or fish in general but these are good tips all the same. First thing I think is to get my betta feeling a bit better before I try letting him put more food in his body. Needs to fast for a few more days and if the bloat doesn't go down I think I'll have to try meds.

Hi everyone. Long time no post! About 20 days ago I bought a new crowntail home: I gave him two days to settle in. Because I had no idea what he'd been fed at the LFS (I forgot to ask) I didn't feed anything during that time--I wanted to make sure he wouldn't refuse my food. The evening of the second day I offered four 0.8mm pellets of NLS Surface Feeder Formula from my existing supply. I feed this to all my other fish including my other bettas. He took them readily. A little while later I noticed my new betta looked like he'd swallowed a marble and was having serious buoyancy problems--basically he was stuck at the surface and would float over onto his side. He was not pineconing. I did a water change, and a few hours later when he looked a little worse I did another one. The next day after work he looked improved but was still having buoyancy issues. I changed the water again. I didn't feed for another few days and the betta got "better". When I fed the NLS pellets again--same issue. I repeated daily water changes and no feeding, and again he got "better". Then I tried offering a different food: Nutrafin Max Complete Mico Granules. These are even smaller than the NLS pellets but I still only offered four bits. Same problem. This only occurs after feeding. None of my other bettas have ever reacted this way to pellet food and I'm not doing anything different with this betta than with the others. I can only guess the food gives him indigestion and gas! As soon as he passes what he's eaten, he's fine. But...I can't not feed him and it's terrible watching him flop around at the surface. I have thought about offering bits of a thawed pea to help him pass the pellets sooner but wonder if the slightly tough flesh of the pea might have an even worse impact instead. Obviously I need to find out what the LFS was feeding (I shudder to consider flake since the amount is so hard to control) but in the meantime I wondered if anyone has encountered this kind of issue before or any advice on what I can do to help poor Osiris.

Thanks for the comment! Nice to know even a year later that people are still enjoying the vid. Actually I was at the Shark Reef again this past November and got to see the new guitarfish they just introduced. Pretty spiffy shark! I have some video of that but haven't posted anything yet.

One of the easiest things you can do is increase your water changes--both the frequency and the amount changed. A clean environment will help boost your fish's natural ability to fight disease, parasites, etc. Extra water changes will also ensure you're eliminating any water quality issues (if any exist). Flashing can be a sign of a lot of things--ich (even if no spots are visible), gill flukes, irritated gills (ie, from ammonia or nitrite poisoning), etc. Fish might flash from internal parasites or other internal discomfort too (such as bacterial infection in the digestive tract). I'm not specifically familiar with swollen/protruding anus so someone else will have to comment. But it would be helpful to know if you've made any changes in your tanks recently: new fish? recently rescaped? new diet? etc.

This was posted today on the Calgary Water Services website: Mind those water changes! : )

BGA also does not like current. How strong is the water movement in the tank?

My canisters weren't happy each time the power flickered but they always came back. The smaller ACs did too. I know if I had still be using my big ACs they would have stopped every time. : )

PS: You need a tall tank that should be at least 30g for angelfish. Do platies OR mollies but not both (too many livebearers, potential for crossbreeding, etc). There is also some debate about the suitability of mollies in freshwater aquariums rather than brackish.

On 28 March 2010 you said the stock list was: 6 Apple Snails 4 Bettas, (2 Crowntail females, 1 Crowntail male, and 1 Crowntail/Halfmoon female) 14 Platies 3 small Albino Bristle Nose Plecos A lone female guppy Then on 30 March 2010 you said you added "12 more platies and a lone female guppy". Nevermind any potential CO2 problems, this tank was severely overstocked. Three BN plecos (even if small) was too much--plecos are poo machines. Apple snails are voracious eaters (which means they are also voracious poo machines) and six of them might be okay in a tank four times the size of yours. All that waste fouls the water quite quickly. Then you had 26 platies too? Besides these fish being prolific breeders, they also add a lot of waste bioload to the tank. (See a trend here?) Even if the tank hadn't been overstocked already, adding so many fish all at once was still a bad move. The existing filter bacteria would not have been able to cope with the sharp increase in bioload, allowing excess ammonia and nitrite to build up. I will also chime in that, no matter the "exception" experience of others, keeping a male betta in with females all the time is a definite no-no, especially in a tank this small. Even in betta harems (all females), extreme care must be taken because the females can often be more aggressive and deadly than males, particularly if one female gets it into her head that she needs to be "queen". You will always be able to find someone who can tell you a story that such a situation "worked out" for them, but the key is for how long? Success in keeping fish is measured in years, not weeks or months. Male betta with female bettas long-term is a ticking bomb.

*waves at yhbae* Nice to see you here too. : ) I've posted in your thread at Age of Aquariums. If anyone else here is curious, here is the ongoing thread on AoA which will probably answer a lot of questions. : )

ACK. I don't know what happened, but she was holding last night, and this afternoon she's definitely not. I suppose if she finally let the fry out, most likely there was a massive feeding frenzy in the tank... Dunno?

Thanks! I should post some more pics. The female ruby still has her fry and if I watch closely I can see their little eyes pressed up against the inside of her mouth! My GBRs laid eggs again too. Still no male for them though. : (

Hmm. That's a good alternative I think. Less monkeying around with the valve.

I do, but since the pH in the tank is 8.0 I don't want to drop it too quickly. I'm also a fan of not wasting electricity and CO2 that won't get used at night anyway.

Thanks guys! Yesterday I moved the 55g. It took seven hours... But thankfully, the female is still holding! She looks like she has a bigger mouthful now than before too, although I've also seen her flashing a bit. : ( None of her tankmates are flashing though, so I'm not sure what to think. I expect there was a bit of die-off in the filters so I'm going to do some extra water changes regardless, but is it possible she's flashing because having a crammed mouth is uncomfortable? Either way I'm just going to leave her be and see what happens--how long before I know if she has a successful batch of fry? I figure most, if not all, of the fry will end up picked off by the other fish...but maybe some will survive. A few more pics, of the move: The "before" shot: Really soupy water, yuck! This was after taking everything out. The sand had a lot of gravel in it so I was straining it out while it was still in the tank. The MTS I saved: The gravel I ditched. There's still more in the sand (I doubt I'll ever get it all) but I still pulled out about two gallons worth: The tank after setting it back up: And a few (better) pics of the Dad:

I have the Red Sea CO2 standard kit (no solenoid). This is my first time using pressurized CO2 so I'm starting out slow--1 bubble/2.5sec or so for the time being. I don't have a whole lot of light so I don't need a whole lot of CO2; I'm just tired of dosing Excel in my 55g and watching certain plants melt. Anyway, since I don't have a solenoid, I see from the instructions that I can use the needle valve to stop the flow of CO2 at night. My question is this: Should I also unplug the reactor pump at night? If there is no CO2 flowing I don't see any reason to keep it going, and the bubble counter has a check valve. But, I did have to briefly unplug the reactor today and when it started up again there was a huge cloud of bubbles. Is this bad?

Well done! I like the last two shots the best. : )

Yesterday was my birthday. :3 For the last half decade or so I've always been really sick on my birthday. (Year before last I actually had to be taken to Emergency the day of.) Given this track record, I usually don't get overly excited when February 3 comes around so I don't end up disappointed. : ) This year I wasn't sick and had a really exceptional birthday so I wanted to share! When I got home from work yesterday, I discovered my sweetheart had gotten out of bed right after I'd left that morning, cleaned the house AND baked me a birthday cake all before he had to leave for work! Seriously, how awesome is that when a man cleans and bakes all by himself? That evening he took me to dinner at The Keg (much yum and free dessert) and afterwards presented me with the uber-special edition of the latest Star Trek movie and (at home) gave me a full body massage. I was totally spoiled!! To top it off! The finkids also wanted to give me a surprise or two of their own... I recently got a group of Ruby Greens to round out the stock in my 55g, but the dominant male took a strong disliking to my GBRs, so I separated them and put the GBRs into a 33g I've had sitting around empty for a while. The GBRs were a bit roughed up; Sheba (dom female) had a nick out of her jaw and she and Cleo (sub female) had split fins. That was a week or so ago, and after daily water changes they're recovering nicely which is great. In fact, they are so happy now in the 33g that, after I returned from my bday dinner, I found eggs! I've never had eggs from either of these females before. Despite being smaller and a lot younger, I think they're Cleo's, because she was sassing Sheba something fierce and even got caught flaring her gills! Cleo guarding the eggs: Sheba seemed really uncertain about the clutch and investigated several times when Cleo wasn't looking: Then something really bizarre happened: with Cleo looking on, Sheba added a few eggs of her own to the group! Guess she didn't want to be left out? Unfortunately, the GBR eggs will not hatch because there is no male in the tank. My male died some time ago after I went away for the weekend and the tank he was in at the time spiked. : ( I haven't been able to find a good healthy male since then. But wait! There was more! I checked on the 55g and lo, I think one of the Ruby Green females might be holding? I'm not totally sure though. She seems to have that "mouthfull" appearance and didn't have it before, though it's admittedly not very prominent: To compare, here's one of the other females who doesn't have the same pouchy appearance under the mouth. This is the best pic I could get of the dominant male and potential Dad. He wouldn't sit still! If the Ruby female is holding, I expect I'll lose the eggs this weekend though. I have to move the 55g tomorrow so I assume she'll either spit or swallow whatever is in her mouth when I start netting the fish to get them out of the tank to tear it down. But even so, this was all very exciting for me on my birthday!

Perhaps it's worth gathering the more commonly-asked questions about these topics into a sticky "FAQ" thread.

Kinda late in the thread, but I wanted to comment on this since it seems no one else did. Bacteria grows on surfaces. There is little to none free-floating in the water column, so taking water from one tank and adding it to another for this purpose is rather useless.

It is definitely a great exhibit. It was the first place my boyfriend and I visited after getting settled in (we stayed at the Luxor) and both of us burned through 4GB of photos and vids before we were all the way through. We spent a good couple of hours there. It's probably my favorite of the places we were able to see from that trip.

I finally finished my photostream from when I visited the Shark Reef Aquarium in Vegas this past November! There are some other critters and some familiar freshwater fish in the video too. : )