windeindoiel

Cool dude.

Unfortunately he died a day or so after moving him to quarantine. He was a black ghost knife, about 16 inches long. We'd had him about a year and a half.

Ok so he's in a 300 gallon that gets water changes 2-3 times a week. For the past couple weeks he's been really bloated looking. At first I thought he was just eating too much as we put A LOT of food in there for the rays, and he always comes out and takes a bunch. But now I think something else might be wrong. His skin is all weird looking, it looks kind of dimpled, and there are weird bumps on him. Not lots of bumps, there's probably only about 5 of them on his whole body. They're big and clear and kind of look like water blisters. The picture doesn't show this. Also his eyes are clouded over. He's been swimming strangely, not hanging out in one of his caves like he usually is, but swimming out in the open, all water levels. Any ideas what's wrong with him?

I would imagine ropefish would happily bite if they had the need. In last months tropical fish hobbyist they had a good article on ropefish, might be worth a look for you. Definately cover your tank... like seriously. I've lost so many of these guys because I think I have them safely contained, but I'm wrong. Two of them managed to fit through a hole half the size of them and get into my sump, where they broke their necks in the protein skimmer of death (don't ask why we were running it on freshwater, because I don't know). All three that live in the 200 gallon have ended up in the overflow, which is covered with a grate so I could just stick them back in the main tank. Also when Lyder was younger he had one that he was always finding on his bedroom floor.

Tim, maybe we'll have baby marbleds soon, as the male has been chewing on the female. It'll be nice when the little male is old enough to mate, I think him and the marbled female will make some absolutely gorgeous babies. Corvette, yes having a baby ray is awesome, hopefully yours will be getting frisky soon, it's exciting. And yes I hope the leo's reach maturity soon, having a baby motoro really makes me want baby leos.

Thanks everyone, it's exciting having a baby ray. Now if only the leo's were big enough to breed... Nice rays Corvette. Before we set up the tank we did lots of research and everyone told us to use estes sand, so we did. It's worked out great, I definately prefer the black though, I think it displays them so much better. Have your rays tried mating at all? Our male and female are probably only about a foot. Oh and nice dat, I think they're very cool.

Ok well first of all here are my little leo babies, who all made it just fine and are growing up nicely. Also one of the females gave birth to two pups, unfortunately she did it while we were on holiday for a week and one of the pups didn't make it. This is the dad: This is the mom, her pattern appears kind of runny where she scarred over, the male beat her up really badly before we seperated them. This is the baby, he's about 3": This is our big female marbled motoro, she has some bite marks on her so the male has been trying to mate, I can't wait for her to have pups they'll be gorgeous. And this is our new little male motoro who we can't wait to breed with the female marbled.

Aww what a cutie.

Very nice lion, I'm so jealous, they're one of my favorite marine fish.

I keep multiple bichirs in the same tank and they seem fine with it. Sometimes they bite eachother but that's mostly during feeding time, and has never been serious. But they sometimes stack up on top of eachother even though there's plenty of room for them to find their own caves. I did have my senegal without any other bichirs for most of his young life and he didn't seem adversely affected by that, so maybe it doesn't really matter if they're in groups or not?

Well my male motoro beat the female up pretty badly, little chunks of white flesh were like hanging off her, but she seems to be making a good recovery. Give it some time and she'll probably be ok, rays are pretty tough.

Yeah he did a really good job on it, it looks awesome. And he's got some nice rays in there, I can't wait till my motoro's are that big.

I only ever read the ray forum on MFK, but I think there are some knowledgeable people there. Lol there's some silly drama there too but oh well. Anyways what kind of rays do you keep?

Eh a little too tall for rays. :P

Well all I know is that my tank has orange strands all over it instead of green strands. I have to do small water changes because I can only drain so much water out of the tank before the water level in the tree hollow drops to nothing and whatever's in there will be out of the water. I suppose I could take out a bit, then refill it, then take some more out and refill it. I probably will do that now and then, because I think big waterchanges are important. :P Anyways I'm so happy the algae is dead.

Ok so I did one dose of using a syringe to put it right by the algae and then dosing the recommended amount into the whole tank. It killed the cyano I spot dosed and all the weird hair algae had turned red. I'm injecting CO2 and have been fertilizing. And doing 10% water changes every other day.

Ok so I have some algae, not sure what kind exactly. It's kind of a deep green but sort of pale in color. It's hair-like but it branches all over the place and grows really long and has covered the entire front of my tank. Very not happy. So I want to try this whole excel dosing thing to see if that will get rid of it. Today I filled up a syringe and put excel down where the algae was, but nothing drastic and sudden happened. So how often should I do this? Does the excel actually stay where I put it? Or will dosing the whole tank do the same thing? There's not very much water movement in the tank (broken powerheads). Thanks.

That's really nice. Are there any fish or shrimp or anything like that in there?

Well I did go with the fire eel, who went for the rocks not the sand. :P Oh well he's still cool. The tank is full of tufa so the water is very hard, that's why we didn't go with a stingray, plus all those fish are what used to be in the ray tank, and they like to eat all the food before it hits the ground, and bully the rays a bit, otherwise we probably would have kept a ray to go in there. Plus the tank is only a foot wide so that's not really good for rays. :P I might try adding some horseface loaches, I suppose if they stay away from the big fish they'd be ok. The bichirs are pretty lazy and well fed and tend not to even go for the food I put in for them unless it falls in front of their faces.

That sucks. That's a lot of fish that died, and it doesn't really sound like the problem is controllable.

Very cool.

I would imagine baby hermits definately need little tiny shells to live in. And seeing how the adults can find all the food in the tank they need I would imagine babies could too. And cool that they're reproducing.

Cool, nice tank.

Ok thanks guys.

Well light has to be your limiting factor, so it's ok if you have a little too much CO2 for how much light you have, but it's not ok if you have too much light. There was a really good article about it somewhere, I don't remember where though. So I would get some CO2 going before trying to upgrade your lighting. And fertilizers and that are good additions too, although that's something I'm still learning about. www.plantgeek.net has some good articles. wind-in-doe-ee-ell... I suppose.