NatureNut

I have a betta that I keep in my son's classroom. His teacher does the water changes and daily care (taught carefully by me, with detailed written instructions to back it up). She contacted me yesterday to say that his fins were turning white on the edges. I went and picked him up today, and sure enough... the dorsal and tail fins have a white streak along the top edge, and it looks like some of the others might be going that way. Nitrates, Nitrites and Ammonia all test at 0. The java moss was gucky with algae, so I pulled it out and just left a small piece of java fern in and I'll put in some new plants when I see that things are settled in there. He's active, eating, and seems fine. The white doesn't have any fuzziness to it, and the rest of his body looks fine. I did a 100% water change, pulled out the carbon filter and put in pimafix and melafix. I did a quick google, and saw that sometimes this can be fin rot, and sometimes it is just a pigment change. I trust you folks far more than the general net. Any ideas, suggestions? I'm keeping him home at least through the long weekend, but those kidlets were sad to see him go! We've had him since the spring, and there's never been a moment where he gave me worry until this. Oh, and he runs with filter, heater, and was sitting at about 82F in the classroom. It's just one of those 7.5W continuous heaters, so tank temp varies with room temp, unfortunately.

OK... here goes. My first attempt at posting pics! In the tank setup, and two fishies pics, it's in my house. Please note the fancy "pen in toilet roll" method of keeping the rio nano skimmer from tipping back and dumping water all over my floor. :P This doesn't get pics of everything I hope to identify, but it's a start! The others are when it was at my friend's house, but I didn't have the heart to wake everything up to take more pics tonight. I find the background distracting. No bonus points will be given for identifying creatures in the background pic Is this some sort of "open brain" coral? I'm being brave and guessing. I had a tentative name for this one, but forgot it. Something like bowl or plate or something else a person might eat with? LOL This pic has the finger coral in it, but anything else you can see I'd be happy to have a name for! Thanks in advance, everyone! I'm really excited to be in SW now, but I do feel over my head at the moment, even if only in 20g of water.

If I can get my daughter to sleep longer than 10 minutes in a row (she has a cold/cough), I'll get some pics up here. I'm checking out the link posted, too. Actually had an ad pop up from that link to a coral supplier that gave me some ideas about what some of it might be, but I'm not going to say anything here in case I look like an idiot. LOL

I have a 20g SW up and running now that I got from a friend in a hurry b/c she needed out of the hobby. I would like to know what I have in it. LOL Can anyone lead me to a good site for identifying the corals/anenome/whoknowswhat that is on my live rock? I've searched around online, but haven't found anything great yet. I know the fish, it's the other stuff I want to get figured out. If there aren't any great sites then maybe I'll just post pics and we can play a rousing game of "and what the heck is THAT?" -roll-

This is a beautiful setup. I might have to consider this combo for my son's classroom when it next needs a fish replacement.

All great advice, but I've moved them before I got to read the last bit. LOL Fortunately all seems well so far. I learned that Murminator's explanations in the PM I got tonight were bang on too... too bad I hadn't read them before I got the tank home. ANYHOW... so far so good. We moved the live rock in buckets covered with water from the tank. The fish moved in the old tank with a couple of low rocks (couldn't tip/slide) to hide near and a few inches of water. We got them here, set up the new tank on the stand, put in some new aragonite, and some water, then moved the fish to a bucket with some rock and water from the old tank. Then I scooped out some old sand and added it and OOOOHHHH boy what a cloud of gucky silty mess. LOL THIS is why Murminator doesn't move old sand. LOL I ended up just adding a cm or so on top of the new and stopping. I did a 'rinse' by making up SW and pouring it in then taking it right out. Seemed to work alright. There's still some guck, but I have everything up and running, including an HOB with filter floss. I'll monitor all parameters carefully and be prepared to do an H2O change if needed. The skimmer isn't really working as a skimmer, though. My friend said the instructions were only in foreign languages, and she was never able to get it just right. So I'm going to figure it out tonight/tomorrow I hope, with the wonders of the internet. I'm finding this quite challenging. I usually like to research things to death before I get into them so I hopefully prevent death... but my friend really needed the tank gone. She's providing almost 24/7 phone support, but I'm sure glad to have this site as well. I'm hooked already... it's amazing how much life is in that tank! My favourite moment so far was my 6 year old son saying "The kitchen smells like the beach!" while I was moving everything around. MMMmmmm... the sweet smell of beach!

That is DEFINITELY a good name for him! LOL Your cats are sleeping 'on the job' just like mine do!

Also... Does anyone have advice on moving critters that are attached to the glass? They'll have to be moved or die when we switch the tank

Thanks! The tank has been running for over 4 years with the fish that are in there. No livestock has been added in the past 2 years. I'll be replacing the actual tank because there's a bit of salt creep along a couple of seams. Just makes me too nervous, even though a consultant told my friend it shouldn't be a problem. The existing skimmer has been running for a few months. I'll move all the aragonite into the new tank, using all the live rock and critters, skimmer, heater etc. I thought to add an aquaclear filter as well, because I never like to have just one filter on a tank.

I'm so glad nobody was seriously hurt in this incident! Bookshelves should be secured to walls too... ours aren't. maybe that's something I should remedy before we end up finding out what our brute strength in a crisis is. As for kitties. Mine used to run around like a maniac and tear through the bathtub as part of his route... too bad he didn't know what the sound of running water meant. That was one wet and mad cat!

A friend of mine decided to get out of the SW hobby so I'm getting her 20g setup. She's got a skimmer, powerhead, heater, dual light system, live rock and a gramma and damselfish. I'll be moving it in the next couple of weeks. The trip is about an 90 minutes or so. Any advice on moving it? She said when she got it, she and the person she got it from drained off most of the water into buckets and put the LR in it, then left the two fish in a few inches of water and moved them in the tank. They put the tank in a plastic container on wheels to stabilize it for transport (I'm trusting the wheels were stopped for driving :P). My intuition says bag/bucket the fish for the trip rather than leaving them in the tank, but would it be less stressful for them if I do leave them in? We have a short flight of stairs to contend with when they arrive here, as well as the longish drive. I'm also interested in any advice people have. I've read through some of the messages in this forum, and I'll dig through more over the next days. This is happening rather suddenly. I've had some lessons from her and will do everything I can to get educated in a hurry. I always wanted to go salt, but never figured it would happen because of the expense of getting started. I know maintenance costs are higher than FW, but when the initial equipment etc is free, I just can't pass it up! The only stipulation my hubby put on it is that one of the existing tanks had to go. Bye Bye bowfront! I didn't have it long, but it's beautifully established. Lucky I found friends who wants to get into fish, so they were happy to take it off my hands.

Well we figured out why she was up at the top of the tank. There's now a nice big mass of eggs under the lid! :thumbs: She must have been storing the sperm since we bought her, or will they lay infertile eggs? I was just reading that I should move the mass to something floating in a tank with no fish... anyone had experience with this? I have a shrimp tank running... I don't know if they'd eat the baby snails or not...

Well a few years back we had a hamster from the SPCA. She was found in somebody's apartment building and was never claimed. One night we came home from visiting and my husband went into the living room first... he said "Kristi... did you let Gizmo out?" I told him of course not (we'd let her out, but only with us RIGHT there because of our two cats). There she was, running across the livingroom to where the cats' food dish was, gathering a pouch full of their kibbles and carrying it back to the PILE outside her cage. There was easily 10-15 trips worth AT LEAST by the time we got home. What were my cats doing? Sitting on the floor watching her and looking at us saying "DO YOU SEE what that undersized rat is DOING?!??!?! Can't you people STOP her?!?!?" We locked down her door thinking that's how she was getting out. It took several more escapes before we observed one. She had an aquarium on one side with a wood and mesh top. She would balance on the wheel that was attached to it by a suction cup, right between the actual wheel and the glass... this part turned so she had to be really careful. Then she would stretch up, push with her nose on the wood until the lid lifted enough to get her paws on the edge and she hauled her chubby butt up and out and dropped down to the ground. After that we used an assortment of bungee cords and heavy text books to keep her in. The funniest part was that our younger cat missed her escapades and could often be found nose to nose with her through the cage part of the enclosure. LOL

I was sitting here tonight watching a movie with my husband when we heard a rather loud thump. Both cats were sleeping on the couch, so the usual culprits weren't responsible. I checked the kids and neither had fallen out of bed. Everything seemed normal. 10 minutes later my husband got up to head for bed and says "Kristi.... the SNAIL is walking across the hall!" LOL Our apple snail 'jumped' out of the tank in the kitchen and had gone about 10 feet or so already. He was happily cruising along looking for who knows what! I'm just glad we were still awake... we're normally sleeping by this time of night. I'd have hated to find him after a night of being a cat toy. I don't even know how long they'd be okay out of the water... Is this a common occurance? Do I need to lock down his tank the way I needed to with one hamster we had? (that's another story altogether...)

I was talking aquariums with a store owner in our town and he mentioned that he's been having problems with snails in his aquarium. He bought 'several' apple snails and they've been dying off one by one. A couple of things came out in our conversation. First, he used distilled water to set his tank up (it has guppies as well, and some live plants) in December, and he hasn't changed his water even once yet... :boxed: You know... the whole "but the water's really clean" thing. He also told me that his tank is pristine... no algae or obvious gunk on the bottom. He wondered if they might be starving. Anyhow, I had him bring in a water sample and there's 0 nitrates, nitrites or ammonia. I'd guess that the snails can't survive without the minerals in the water, anything else that could be going on? I've already told him to do water changes and to use mineralized water.

I've seen things like this posted before and I love the idea... I wondered about exactly what Christian said, though... how do you clean the back hidey hole areas and make sure there's enough water flow through?

Higher consumption at night could possibly be due to lights being on, TV useage etc? Also sometimes people have water softeners that cycle at night and things like that.

The ghost shrimp in my betta's tank swim up to the top for pellets all the time. Cherry shrimp should do the same, right?

or Viagra, perhaps... I'm going to order some for my shrimp too

Did you happen to notice if they still have stands? I had two extremely fussy kids when I was there and didn't get to look at the stands they had in the sidwalk sale. I desperately need something for my 30g.

My PC is on most of the day and our power bills have never been over $100/month, and that's with 4-5 tanks running in the house. I'd say consumption that high is indicitive of some HUGE problem with one of your appliances or something. I think you can get a little meter thing that measures the kW/h consumed by an appliance. You could plug your power bar into it from one of your tanks and get an idea of how much it uses. Just a thought.

Thanks for the solutions! I'll check the o ring carefully and give it a good clean.

I did some slightly overdue water changes on all my tanks yesterday. When I woke up this morning I noticed that my 33g wasn't completely full, and when I walked up to it found the floor covered in water. Luckily only about a gallon hit my laminate floor, and there's just a slight bit of water damage to a couple of the boards. However, I found that it was caused by the AC filter I have on it. It was slowly dripping from where the motor attaches to the casing. I couldn't identify exactly where the water was coming out, but the attachment seemed VERY slightly untwisted, if that makes sense, after I took it off. I'm not sure if it was like that before I took it off, though, or if it happened when I removed the filter... I didn't remove the filter from the tank when I did water changes, just changed media, so it seemed odd to me that it could have been bumped loose, but I suppose it might have been. The water was running down the cord, which is good because A, I had a drip loop and B I didn't have any water on my stand/under the tank etc, so cleanup was relatively easy. Any thoughts? I supposed I'll run it for awhile on a bucket in a sink or something to test it, but since I had a few minutes here I figured I'd ask anyhow.

Grats! Keeps us posted on how they do.

Wow!!! That's more than enough to go around, I'd say! You must be doing something very right! Maybe too right? :P